


V2.5 The Zero at the End of the World

by linkzeldi



Series: Dangan Box [3]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Medaka Box
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-09-16 03:32:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 35
Words: 492,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linkzeldi/pseuds/linkzeldi
Summary: In the aftermath of the death game, Medaka Box and Dangan Ronpa characters alike find themselves in a dream world they are unable to wake up from, leaving no other option for the world to be destroyed. However, even after waking up from the dream trouble isn't over yet as World's Most Annoying Best Friend of Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, the Unknown Shiranui Hansode disappears from the academy heading to her home village. Only for the students to find even in the real world and its difficult to distinguish between real and fakes. As the two world destroyers are once again, called on to save people with the help of Kurokami Medaka, a terrible idea all around.





	1. The Bell of Fate Rings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This makes a lot of references to Ikuhara's general works, (lots of chapters are named after Penguindrum and Utena episodes) and also references to the Monogatari series to try to evoke an atmosphere of both surrealism and the theme of growing up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cover Art is a commission by Oakyvii on Tumblr  
> Komaeda's intro narration is a zaregoto reference.  
> It's funny because Iichan and Komaeda both talk about people like stepping stones.

 

 

 _“It’s a delusion. I’m in a delusion._ _These delusions are running wild._ _  
__Hopping on the express train, I’m on my way to see you now._ _  
__Excuses, reasons, they’re all such a pain._ _  
__It’s destiny, so it can’t be helped you see?_ _  
__If this love of mine, cannot come true, then I’ll never awaken again for eternity_ _  
__Not knowing anything I closed my eyes and wished on a star, “May I remain always cute.”_ _  
__If the world can’t be the way I want , then I have no use for it anymore._ _  
__I only want one thing: Everything, everything, everything._ _  
__A world that isn’t the way I want is not a possibility._ _  
__There’s only one thing I desire: Everything, Everything, Everything._ _  
__Even though I only know. This one feeling._ _  
__Everyone’s already made up their minds about me. I don’t know_ _  
__But I pretend to know._ _  
__If I gave up easily, wouldn’t that be such a waste?_ _  
__(Doki Doki.)”_ _  
_ ~ “Delusion Express”~

  **Book 1:** SekaiMonogatari (World Story)  
Nagito Lamb 

* * *

  
My senpai once said this to me. 

『Isn’t there something really scary about people who knowingly, consciously, use others as stepping stones?』  
  
The truth is we've talked about this over and over again. To me, the conversations are starting to get fuzzy and blend together.   
  
But, it all boils down to the same conflict between the two of us. What is a genius, and what is not. What is talent, and what is not. My Senpai and I fight about that over and over again, to me the definition is getting hazy and starting to blur.   
  
My senpai told me that people who use others as stepping stones to climb higher, those who ascend with talent, are the ones who are the worst. But, there was a time before I thought about others as stepping stones. When, just by living with all the best of intentions and delusions of just cause I ended up stepping over people again and again. Around me, people fell at my feet, and carelessly to continue living I ignored their bodies and stepped over them. I thought that was truly disturbing.  
  
To this my Senpai would say. 『You should be nicer to yourself! It’s not wrong to try to live, is it?』  
  
Thankfully, whether or not it was right or wrong for me to live didn't matter in the end. I didn't even make it to the final showdown of those people with talent. I was left behind. I was the one who was stepped over. Call it karma or whatever.   
  
Sorry, I should make myself more clear before I get ahead of myself. I'm bad at ordering my thoughts, I'm doing the best I can for this introduction. In the story before this one, several geniuses were trapped on an island, and as the genre convnetions dictate for those on an island a series of murders started happening. Those geniuses the best of humanity murdered each other like normal people. Me, and my senpai were the only untalented trash among them, we were observers watching from the sidelines. Only, I didn't realize it. I mistook my role for that of a main character.   
  
Useless side characters like me became nothing more than fodder.   
Yeah, this story should feature more interesting characters. The ones who escape the island.   
Like a devil who just wanted to enjoy hell like it was paradise.  
Like a witch who wanted herself to burn as much as she burned the world.  
Like a god that turned out to be just as boring as the humans he looked down on in the end,  
Like a sword that just wanted to hold someone’s hand even if they would cut it.  
Like a wolf whose loyalty never went away no matter how much they were beaten.  
Guided by a hapless main character of a story of despair with a hopeful conclusion.  
Guided by a purposeful main character of a story of despair with zero conclusion.  
They were able to escape from this world, stepping over the others, leaving them behind.  
Oh, there was one I forgot an imitation detective. He’s probably not even worth mentioning. Fakes generally, aren’t.  
All of those people graduated from this island. Their stories should be continued.  
  
However, instead we are going to dwell on those who were left behind. Those who died. In the end, the devil did not escape. He stayed with those who were left behind. Perhaps he wanted to rule over hell like it was heaven, I can't possibly hope to understand my senpai.   
  
I was left behind as well.   
  
Left behind with a sheep. A foolish sheep. Sheep do not need to have any intelligence at all, all they need to know how to do is follow the herd. However, this sheep was born broken in that way that he could not follow any herd. A lonely sheep. A dysfunctional sheep. There’s no use in a sheep existing without a herd, except to be snapped up and devoured by predators, but stubbornly that sheep continued existing still.  
  
That lost sheep.  
That time on that island, with those people, it’s not even worth mentioning. Their existence was so out of reach, so distant, that you could never even hope to muster a desire to approach it.  
In other words it was inevitable somebody like me would be left behind from them.  
It's not that I lost track of them. It's not that I fell off the path.  
From the beginning I was always left behind. From the beginning I was never going to catch up to them.   
The people who escaped off that island were able to continue to live, while I was not. 

My senpai once said this.   
『In other words, it’s a question of who lives their life beautifully and who doesn’t, right? Those who aren’t beautiful think they need to suffer and suffer until they become beautiful.』

My Senpai believed those who were born without talent suffered the most.   
Though, to refute him, I believe the opposite. Those who are completely obtuse, so oblivious as to never think for a second about one’s purpose in life, to never think about the meaning to life, to never think about the value of life. For a sheep lost amongst its herd that could easily be mistaken for any other sheep in the herd, to them this world must be a paradise. Calm, peaceful, and serene. Trivial things would be major, and major things trivial, and life would not have to be lived to its fullest. Instead, they could lives enjoying it the normal amount, grazing a normal amount without feeling the need to devour everything.

Untalented people, members of the crowd, those who live without thinking they have it made.   
Too much righteousness can just be harsh.   
The world is harsh to beautiful places, and beautiful people.  
The world is kind to ugly places and ugly people.

My senpai said this again. 

『 Essentially people live in one of two ways. Either they are beautiful enough to live on their own, or they live for the sake of others. Two ways. Either you allow your value to be absorbed by others, or you chisel away at the value of others to try to take some for yourself.』

In response I asked him question after question.   
Which should take precedence, the value of others or your own value?  
To accept others as boring, or yourself as boring?  
What if someone could choose neither, and doing that they chose both.  
To them, both themselves, and the others around them, and the whole world was boring.  
Surely, such a person would go mad and die.  
People who are unable to decide are unable to go on living, that was the conclusion I reached.  
Still, I wonder.   
But, does it have to be such a distinct choice?  
Do you really have to choose?  
  
Senpai and I repeat the same arguement again and again.   
We ask these questions back and forth.   
『Where is the line between genius and not genius?』  
"Where is the line between what is true and who is a lie?"  
『Where is the line between who is true and what is a lie?』  
Yet, no matter how many times we parrot these questions back at each other we never reach a clear cut answer.   
The two of us between each other are searching for it, what is considered an acceptable reason to continue living. Even those who use others as an excuse to live, are they that different from those who live for themslves? Surely, they're just trying to find a reason to live too.   
  
When I brought up that argument he turned to me with a smile.『So how about you then?』  
  
As he pointed it out, without realizing it I had begun to talk about myself.  
  
He wanted to know about me. Even though he probably already knew the answer he asked. 『How does the world look to you?』   
  
To me, after experiencing that island. To me, a pure white, a colorless existence.To me, it would all probably just turn out to be mindless babble. It wasn’t even worth the trouble of thinking of an answer. Even if I were to put my heart into saying it, the words would become twisted, because I myself am twisted.  
  
And so I said nothing. Instead, I looked away and thought of something else. The conversation ended between me and my Senpai once more with no winners, only a draw, two losers talking. Yet the question still remained in with me.  So, how does the world look this through this person’s eyes? One red, and one green. Just how did I look in this person’s eyes? Would I appear differently in each eye? Even if they had a hundred different eyes though and I made a hundred different faces for each eye, they wouldn’t see the sum total of me.  
  
And that was for the best.  
Because that person, that irreplaceable person I had already forgotten about them again.  
Just like how in my rambling I had forgotten to tell you all what kind of story this was.  
That’s supposed to be the gimmick of these opening statements. It’s getting harder and harder for me to remember so I’ll say it quickly, speaking faster than is considered socially acceptable. First was a story that began and ended in despair, second was a story about nothing, and this is a story about the end of the world.  
  
It’s actually about two world destroyers. The whole world? Don’t be so dramatic.  Each person occupies their own little world, so the world can end over and over again. This person’s world ended, and that person’s world ended, that’s all this is. There’s no need for drama. I loathe drama. Hey, don’t laugh senpai that’s mean to laugh when somebody is speaking honestly for once. I’m always being bullied by you, you know?  
  
The world ending isn’t such a sad thing. Especially if even after enduring the end of the world you get a boyfriend. I’m not sure why I just made that statement, it seemed to be one of those meta references that people around me are always making.

No, but the end of the world is not necessarily bad. After all, when shonen manga are written to go on forever eventually stop becoming interesting right? Stories are meaningful because they have endings. Those shonen manga that go on forever tend to have crappy endings where everyone becomes heterosexual and then gets married to somebody they talked to once. I can guarantee this story will not end that way. The end of the world is better than an ending like that, especially if it gets you a boyfriend.  
  
When the witch met the devil, the boy with nothing and the girl with everything, it was the end of their lonely worlds that consisted entirely of themselves.  
When the boy who aws half god and half man, met the lone sheep and cradled in his arms, it was the end of their hollow and empty worlds.

A story about endings. Well, considering this story is marked 2.5 than it’s obvious there’s going to be one more continuation, so perhaps it’s arrogant of me to claim that this is the story about the end of the world. Sorry, I’ve forgotten my place.  
  
Things are eventually fated to end. When reflecting on the end, some can think, because it’s inevitable it was sad. They start to hate fate itself. I can’t do that though, maybe because I think differently from most people.  
  
I like the word fate. I mean, at the beginning of an anime if you while running late to school with bread in your mouth, trip and run into your love interest that’s a fateful encounter, right? If things like that were left up to something as fickle as chance, then they would be meaningless. Surely,it’s fate. Of course, not every character you meet is your love interest, they’re not all happy encounters, there are rivals, antagonists, lots of bad people, and lots of sad people. For me, I’ve tried over and over again to accept unfortunate, unavoidable things like that as fate.That some people are born talented, and some people are not, that too is fate, it seems unfair. But, this is what I think: Even sad, trying things must have a reason. Not a single thing is wasted, if it leads to… if you have…

Ah… What was that word again?  
What gives fate meaning is ho…  
I forgot.  
Well it’s for the best I’m going to forget my role as narrator soon and blend into the crowd.  
True the narration will be following me around but I’m not a main character.  
If I was, I would be a forgettable one like the kind that is the bland player self insert in video games. If only I could be silent like that too then this would be a perfect story.  
I’m just a perspective character that you follow around to find the more interesting characters.  
My importance is best forgotten too.  
It’s for the best, I said over and over again.  
It’s fine, I repeated, wanting it to become the truth.  
A lie and a truth, a fake and a real thing,  
A delusion, and a dream.  
They did not necessarily need to be so different. Well even if they were different it doesn’t matter because I’ve already forgotten the distinction between those things, as I’ve forgotten my place as well. And then I blended seamlessly into the crowd, thinking I had finally found my herd, and forgetting I was unhappy, I tried again this time to become happy.

 

#  😈

The boy was walking to school.

Oh sorry, after all that pompous narration in the beginning I started off with such a simple and typical scene. I told you the main character in this story was pretty much worthless. Haha, sorry about that really.  
  
The boy was walking to school, and you’ll be surprised to know that he was late. That’s a place as good as any to start a story about a normal boy’s, normal daily life at school. He picked his pace up just enough to walk slightly ahead of the crowd of people. They were not worth describing, if this were a video game, they would probably be rendered with randomly generated faces, or not even rendered with faces at all just indescribable blue emptiness.  
  
That boy should have been rendered in blue too. He wore the same uniform as everybody else. Brown jacket, with a red and green vest, and a tie around his neck. He got chills easily, so he wore a sweater over the vest of the same color. He walked with his jacket open and unbuttoned but this was not a particularly unique feature, lots of kids walk to school with their jackets unbuttoned. He did not seem like the person to do so, but every single person who passed him, he greeted them with a cheerful good morning.  
  
His name was Komaeda Nagito. He walked along the sidewalk, next to a fenced off wooded area, where a cat was sleeping peacefully in the tree. He tried to smile back at the yawning cat, making an expression very similiar to a cat’s smile when it was trying to pass as innocent. He was just a run of the mill guy, who goes to a run of the mill school. As he turned his head back, his curls of white hair bounced gently.  
  
There’s only one thing really exceptional about him… Oh, it’s not the white hair that’s a pretty common anime trope.  
  
Just as he turned the corner he realized he had not turned his head in time. There was a small girl, with a small and cute appearance, a large antannae in her otherwise cropped short and cute hair, and a large lollipop shoved into her mouth running to school. “I’m late… I’m late…” She muttered, before slamming straight into Komaeda.  
  
That girl was barely tall enough to reach his chest, but Komaeda was basically just skin wallpapered over bone, and had no weight to his exstence at all, so immediately he spun around and flew backwards. At the same time, a truck driving too close to the sidewalk plowed into him, launching him in the opposite direction. His flight was stopped by a tree, though he impacted the tree hard enough that several large, pointy seeds from the tree fell and got caught in his hair. Before he could even do anything about those, he saw the cat falling and quickly held out his hands to catch it. The cat was very grateful for being saved, and immediately made a sour hiss and drew his claws out, showed his gratitude by mauling his face.  
  
The boy’s thin skin, and pale face with shallow features, was immediately covered in bright red scratches, as the cat quickly scampered off. The boy however barely reacted to any of this, simply reaching up for the seeds that had gotten caught in his hair and flicking them away. “Yes, I have the worst luck…” Nagito Komaeda muttered.  
  
There you have it, his one point of characterization. Establishing anything else would be superfluous. It’s just going to be this joke over and over again. Next time maybe he’ll trip and accidentally fall and touch a girl’s breasts. The height of comedy. Or well, he likes dudes so maybe he’ll accidentally grab a guy’s crotch instead? Either way this is the guy we’re following around for the narrative, all he is is a shallow clown.  
  
At that moment as he climbed over the fence again, he saw Hitoyoshi Zenkichi appear. He offered a hand right where Hansode had fallen. The cute little girl opened her eyes, looked up and saw in front of her with blonde hair that glowed as bright as the sun dazzling behind his head, his hair blew dramatically in the breeze, somehow two of his shirt buttons became undone and his shirt fell open and that too blew dramatically in the wind. “The ground is a terrible place to take a nap, my lollipop.” She took his hand. Really, who would not take his hand in that situation?  
  
As Komaeda jumped down from the fence he saw a certain aura surrounding him. Due to several wires being crossed in his brain, Komaeda often associated feelings with certain colors. To him though, love was like every color at once, it was an emotion that made you feel like you were floating but at the same time if you tried to hold it in your hands you noticed how fragile it was. Like a bubble, it could pop any moment. Sometimes when it did pop though, like a bubble filled with many different water colors, the colors would just splash everywhere and get more mixed up, and you among the colors would become indistinct.  
  
That was what he thought, as he observed Hitoyoshi Zenkichi and Hansode from the side. Which was his ideal place to be, observing from neutral territory. Unfortunately, Zenkichi would not leave him alone. They wore the same uniform (Zenkichi wore it better of course) because they attended the same school, Sandbox Academy. It was a slightly eccentric private school, but both of them were allowed to attend because they had a relation on the faculty. Otherwise, it was just like any other school, there was no human experimentation, or superhuman abilities present to speak of. Wait, why did I mention that? I’m going to sound like a chuunibiyou. Well, let’s say it was a school that might feature in a standard school romance setting, but it would never be the star of an urban fantasy. Komaeda thought Zenkichi would make a good protagonist for a love comedy at least.  Anyway, their uniforms were different in one aspect Zenkichi’s had a red band around his arm because he was the student council president of that school.

 _There are people in this world, with talent great enough to shape the foundation of society. I’m not one of them. I’m just another face in the crowd. Which isn’t to say I envy them. No, it’s much easier to be a nobody. The star of the show is  such a restrictive demanding role._ Komaeda thought to himself, as he readjusted his bag around his shoulders, and with face still bleeding put on a smile as he tried to slip by unnoticed. Of course with Zenkichi that would not be possible.  
  
Zenkichi moved and turned to look at Komaeda. As he did, Hansode grabbed his sleeve. The fabric that she held between her fingers, that was main character material right there. However, Zenkichi shrugged her off and looked back apologetically. “I’m sorry, Hansode.”

“That’s fine, idiots who always run off to help others… I like guys like that.”  
  
“Haha, you should be careful. If you say you like guys like that, I’ll start to think that you like me.” Zenkichi said, patting his best friend on the shoulder as he ran off after Komaeda.  
  
“Well I did say I like idiots…” Hansode bemoaned, as she took a large chunk out of her lollipop with her teeth.  
  
Komaeda wished he could stop breathing sometimes, so his skin would turn blue. It was a strange wish, but he was a strange boy so he thought it wasn’t that far off. If all the color could fade from his body, he’d fade into the background entirely and then nobody would notice him ever again. A lot of teenagers his age did not think of dying, and Komaeda had no particular reason to think that way, but he was a gloomy guy too. He had thought about it for a long time and he decided it was not really the idea of dying that bothered him, but rather the cessation of existence meant he would not be able to watch others anymore. If he could feel anything at all after death, it would probably be loneliness. So, the kind of death where he became invisible, and could simply watch others from the background without interacting, if he could stay around as a ghost in white, instead of merely looking like one than that would be ideal for him.  
  
Suddenly though he was pulled out of his thoughts, as a warm hand grasped his back. He looked back to see Zenkichi smiling at him like the sun. It was blinding, Komaeda had to narrow his eyes. “Hey, how come you always sneak off to school early?” Zenkichi said.

“If you’re seen walking to school with someone like me, you’d probably get made fun of.”

  
“Well if they make fun of me I’ll just hit them so it’s no big deal.” Zenkichi said, as he curled the fingers of his opposite hand into a fist.  
  
“Well, I’m a pacifist by nature so being alone helps me avoid all conflict. You should thank me for making this sacrifice for your convenience. I’m basically gandhi.” Komaeda said, tongue flicking back and forth as he did. Oh, he had not meant to speak that honestly, Zenkichi sometimes drew it out of him without either of them realizing.

“Oi, since when did you suddenly become considerate of others? Where’s the Komaeda that I know, did you wake up an entirely different person this morning.’  
  
Komaeda pouted slightly. “I think I’m a very considerate person, I’m always thinking of others.”  
  
“Yeah so are some stalkers.” Zenkichi teased relentlessly, as he scratched scratched at the bridge of his nose with one finger. “Anyway it’s more convenient for us to walk together since we’re coming from the same house.”

That was true. From childhood onward, Komaeda and Zenkichi had lived in the same house and been raised together. Komaeda’s parents were doctors at the same hospital that HItoyoshi worked. Despite being well off, and living fortunate lives, on the day their son was born what was supposed to be the most fortunate day of their lives they were both hit by a car. It was especially unfortunate because they were somehow hit by a car when staying in a third floor hospital room, apparently the car had gone out of control and drove wild off the parking ramp. Don’t laugh, this is a tragic backstory. See, I told you Komaeda was nothing more than a shallow clown.  
  
Regardless, the infant Komaeda was taken in by their close family friend Hitoyoshi Hitomi. The next year she got pregnant. If she had been a single mother, raising two children on her own might have been difficult, but she was madly in love with a normal man. She had a normal amount of happiness with him. Currently, they were overseas on a second honeymoon and had left Komaeda in charge of the house. Every day he woke up early to make Zenkichi and him boxed lunches, clean the house, water the plants like a proper house husband, but then he set Zenkichi’s alarm for him and made sure to leave early to try to walk to school alone.  
  
For some reason he felt the need to distance himself from a boy he had known since childhood. Yeah, he was talented like that. His only talent was being an unfamiliar face in the crowd to everyone he met, amazing. “That’s not fair Hitoyoshi-kun,” Komaeda said with his sensitive and delicate voice, looking up with red eyes. “I can’t be a stalker because I’ve never been in love before.”  
  
Zenkichi took his hand off Komaeda’s shoulder and got closer to him, staring into his eyes. “Jeez, calling a guy you’ve known since you were two years old by his last name, how cold can you get.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of warm and inviting people in this world, I just don’t happen to be one of them.” Komaeda said neutrally, tilting his head in confusion as to why Zenkichi was suddenly so close.  
  
“Quit philosophizing at me randomly… and Hey, did you not get enough sleep or something? Your eyes are all red.”  
  
Komaeda blinked. He had thought his eyes colorless and dull, red? Well, there were several medical things wrong with him, he supposed he had just come down with something. “Hitoyoshi-kun quit staring deeply into my eyes. Hansode-san was right you’re so insensitive.”  
  
“Huh?” Zenkichi said, scratching at his head as he backed off as asked.  
  
Right at that moment they were approached by another. A boy with a mostly shaved head with only a light layer of blonde fuzz remaining at the top, his cheeks were red and round giving him a baby face that he tried to hide by shaving a delinquent’s sprialing fade into both sides of his hair. He walked wearing a brown vest, standing proud with his hand over one of his shoulders. “Oi, are you two bickering again? You should know better than to give your housekeeper a hard time, Zenkichi. Your dark secrets are going to get spilled all over, and then your guts next if you piss them off.” The third member of their trio had finally arrived, Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko. The former heir to the Kuzuryuu clan and current normal high school student.  
  
A trio. He had a trio. Even if Komaeda wandered away on his own and became lost, somehow those two always managed to find him. Him, a simple member of the crowd, had become somebody who was found in this world. He wanted to express his happiness in that moment, but he couldn’t, his tongue was twisted, so he just rambled on as always. “Awe, Kuzuryuu-san is finally recognizing my worth as a housekeeper. The lowly me getting even basic human respect is such high praise.”

“What are you doing talking about spilling my guts this early in the morning! Don’t you have any tact at all?” Zenkichi said, snapping at Fuyuhiko.  
  
“You’re the tactless idiot that literally sliced your guts open in front of everybody.” Fuyuhiko snapped back.  
  
“That was one time! Ahhhh, so embarrassing!” Zenkichi had a terrible habit of pushing everything to extremes and then regretting it later. He fumbled for a moment covering his face as it reddened. Then, he quickly ran to catch up with the two of them.  
  
Komaeda stood in the middle of both boys as they walked. His soft and quiet voice was easily drowned out by the two of them, so he simply kept his quiet, glancing between them, and tried to smile in a way that would not creep either of them out.  
  
“Hey, Komaeda what the hell happened? Did you get jumped? If you did tell me, I’ll tell my sister’s guys to pay them back twice as hard.”  
  
“Oh right you’re bleeding…” Zenkichi remarked, narrowing his eyes. Being empathic towards others was supposed to be one of his character traits but perhaps he had forgotten that.  
  
Komaeda closed his eyes, and smiled just like the cat did trying to feign innocence. “Some chestnuts fell on me, that’s all. If I really was jumped I wouldn’t tell you though Kuzuryuu-san, because I’m sure whoever beat me up would have a pretty good reason for doing it, like they needed to relieve stress or something. In that case I’m happy to help them.”  
  
“Jeez, it’s reasons like that why you got bullied so much last year… I know saying this is pretty fucking useless but you could stand up for yourself a little bit.” Fuyuhiko said, sighing in exasperation.  
  
“I couldn’t possibly put my needs over somebody else’s. That would just be selfish for an incredibly small existence like mine.” Komaeda said, holding his palms up to proclaim his innocence again.  
  
All throughout middle school it was Zenkichi who always stuck up for him, to the point where the boy became a minor legend as a paragon of justice throughout all the various yankees, ne’er do wells, and miscreants. However, his first year of highschool Zenkichi was still attending Ark Middle School. Nothing of consequence happened that year and no tragic backstories occured, but because they were at separate schools Komaeda was picked on and isolated. Before it got too far though, a senpai dressed in an all black uniform stepped in. Then later by the time of his second year he had already made friends with Fuyuhiko, and Zenkichi became class president as only a first year. It had ended well, so there was no use dwelling on it at all.  
  
What had bothered Fuyuhiko though, was that both of them knew when pressed Komaeda could be sharp tongued, and he could even figure a way out of most bad situations. Even though he was just a normal schoolboy he acted like a survivalist who had been running all his life. It was just when others confronted him, or tried to start a fight with him no matter what they said Komaeda always just took it, like he believed he was deserving of it.

Zenkichi stared at Komaeda’s face. “Yeah, those scratches are pretty bad-”  
  
“They’re fine.. A cat got friendly with me that’s all.”  
  
“Dude, I told you not to mess with other cats. You’re basically part cat so they all get territorial.” Zenkichi said, staring more intensely which caused Komaeda to shrink away. “You should go to the nurse’s office.”

“I couldn’t possibly take up any more of Tsumiki-san’s time than I already-” Komaeda was a frequent visitor to the nurse’s office. It was why despite being smart, he had poor grades due to constantly being late or missing from class.

“If you don’t go I’m just gonna twist your arm behind your back and drag you.” Zenkichi said, glaring at this point.  
  
“Oh, I would love it if you demonstrated your martial arts moves on me. Have you learned more since the last time? You’re always getting stronger and improving, Hitoyoshi-kun.” Koamaeda said, responding to the threat with a smile.  
  
Fuyuhiko reached forward and chopped him softly on the head. For a former heir to a gangster family, he was a bit of a soft touch. “Just listen to him and go get it checked out. Jeez what would you do without us?”  
  
“Hmm, I’d probably talk with my alien friends instead.”  
  
“What? You have friends besides us, Komaeda?” Fuyuhiko said, smirking as he did.  
  
“Ask about the alien part first!” Komaeda snapped back, finally being drawn into the banter. “Fine, I will… thanks…” Komaeda finally said with hesitation as he walked ahead of the other two. The school bells were finally ringing on their last day before break. The three of them, Zenkichi, Fuyuhiko, and Komaeda, Larry, Curly, and Moe, a comedy trio in the making walked into the gates of Sandbox Highschool together as a large clocktower that dominated the skyline of the school continued to ring.

The bells weren’t foreshadowing anything besides the start of a school day, nor were they particularly symbolic, but for some reason the sound of ringing would not leave his ears.

 

😈

 

When waiting for Tsumiki Mikan to get more gauze in the nurse’s office, suddenly a ball broke through the window and knocked a bottle of acidic medicine poder over, splashing it right onto Komaeda’s face and causing a small smoke explosion that burned his skin.  
  
What? It’s funny, laugh. Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

“Aaaaaaah! Komaaaaeddaaaaa!” Tsumiki said, grabbing her face as she watched the smoke billow from where Komaeda’s face was a moment ago. She had large round eyes that always seemed to be watering, one hand of hers was bandaged up, and so was one leg of hers. Her hair long purple hair was cut unevenly due to the fact that Tsumiki cut it herself and because of that t resulted in many split ends and tails that all seemed to fly in every direction when she freaked out like this.  
  
A common occurrence, she possessed a nervous temperament. It was probably a good thing for a nurse in training to be so jumpy, it made them more aware. Komaeda knew though when it counts she was someone who could be relied on. She quickly rushed forward to his face, and did not care at all about her own bandaged covered fingers getting burned as she tried to wipe it away with a cloth.  
  
When it was all finally cleared off, Komaeda was smiling same as ever. That smile too, made Tsumiki slightly nervous even though that was not Komaeda’s intention. “K-k-komaeda, d-don’t you ever get sad or anything about how this stuff keeps happening to you?”  
  
Komaeda had never heard anybody put it in such short and sweet words. Stuff keeps happening, that was it, that was his whole life. “Sad? I don’t get why I’d be sad... I believe there’s a fixed quantity of luck in the world.” As his face was finished with a fresh layer of bandages that covered over his nose and half his face, he leaned forward and picked up the ball from the ground. He placed with it between his fingers, turning it slightly by letting his finger smove down the laces. “Which means that the more bad luck I have, the more good luck that leaves for others.” He tossed the ball up just a small amount, and caught it again, before passing it to his other hand. “Can you think of a greater honor than a nobody like me knowing that they can still make the world a better place for everyone?” Suddenly, as his hands had a tendency to do, they flew out from his sides and dramatically gestured. Even though it was just the two of them alone in this office, his voice was already raising volume uncontrollably.  
  
“So, you’re basically saying it’s better if you’re the one suffering.” Mikan said, cutting straight through his rant in a quiet voice. Komaeda was caught off guard for a moment, and quieted down. It was not that he liked or disliked Tsumiki Mikan, but the two of them possessed a similar temperament. He felt uneasy around her, but that was not Mikan’s fault, it was his own for feeling uneasy around himself. Mikan however, noticed his sudden quieting. “Ah! Sorry, I just tend to be observant of people, but it never matters because I’m always so tactless about it! Sorry, sorry!”

“It’s fine Tsumiki-san. In you, it’s just a cute quirk of yours.” Personality flaws were somehow more manageable if you referred to them as quirks. Heroes and villains had flaws, normal people of little consequence had quirks.

Mikan had already started to bow though. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to be rude.”  
  
Komaeda sighed. Perhaps the real reason he was never good when he was around Mikan was that her tendency to fly off the handle, meant he had to repress his own tendency to fly off the handle and play straight man around her. Imagine, him of all people playing straight man, and he wasn’t even straight. Well, it was because of their unfortunate similarities they happened to both be picked on last year. “It’s fine! I’m naturally tactless anyway, so being rude is like the default on me. Kindness is totally wasted on someone like me whose too stupid most of the time to realize when people are trying to be nice.”  
  
Now it was just a match of self depreciation. Winner take all. However, suddenly Mikan snapped out of her rapid bowing and straightened up, putting a bandaged finger on her lip. “Oh, I was just thinking when you said there was a limited amount of luck in the world, I wonder if you really cared about relieving the bad luck of the rest of the world, or just one person.”  
  
There she went, being observant again. Komaeda hated when he was misunderstood, but he hated when he was understood just as much. Basically, he was a diva that was hard to please, his standards were too high for somebody who was not even a main character. “You mean Senpai? There’s no helping a guy like that, even in a perfect world he’d somehow find a way to be miserable.” Komaeda who was always smiling, found a scowl on his face in that moment.  
  
Komaeda and Mikan were connected another way. Last year, they had both been taken care of by their kind senpai. However, that senpai in a pitch black uniform had stopped attending this school, otherwise he would have been a third year. “Hmm, Komaeda-kun? Are you talking about him or yourself?”  
  
“I don’t know if you’re insulting him or me more, by comparing the two of us.” Komaeda said, uncharacteristically blunt.  
  
Tsumiki had stopped paying attention to Komaeda, to feel the shelves with her bandaged hand. “It’s true you two are like yin and yang. Whenever one of you does something, it seems like the other does the opposite on purpose.”  
  
It was a bit of an oversimplification. If Komaeda were to express it, say he were some kind of narrator he would say that there was no speck of realism in the bond between them, no clarification, or clownification, not a single bit of cheap empathy was shared between them, and above all else there was no romance. The true comedy of it,however, was that in spite of it all, there was still something between them. The kind of comedy that bred sorrow, demanded compassion, and had an even poignant air.  
  
It was almost laughable, a cheap and shallow comedian like himself having such a meaningful bond. When he thought of about Senpai, it was like looking in a clear stretch of water only to see instead of his reflection another face looking back of him - that was the only way he could make sense of the other boy. And, as Komaeda was terrible at making sense to begin with, there’s absolutely no point in trying to put that boy’s existence into words.

Being with Kumagawa was like looking into his own face, and talking to himself.  
Maybe in the modeling phase when their npcs were designed they used the same base model.  
Maybe when they were being programmed, their code shared the same root.  
Like reflections in a mirror.  
  
The first time he was a young boy he looked in a mirror and saw himself looking back and thought there was another person in a mirror dimension looking back. An endless world on the other side of the mirror, separated by a single pane, where another version of him existed living in an entirely different world that he could only gaze upon through this small window.  
It wasn’t ignorance that allowed such a paradoxical world to exist. It mattered little which world was the true one, and which was false. If one side was real, then the other was fake, but if reality was in fact fake, then both sides had equal value, and equally lacked value.  
  
That is to say, like when a dog sees its reflection in the mirror and barks at it believing it to be real. Something like that, yeah that’s a cuter metaphor. Though Komaeda never owned a dog, it was a bit sad but he thought he was better off since he never had to face the pain of losing one either.  
  
Humans were different than dogs though, once when he was a boy he had put his cold and small hand upon the mirror and realized that he could not push the window open. All he felt was a void, nothing but nothingness. The thing allowed to exist in his imagination, was not allowed to by the laws of reality. Those damn laws of physics were far more powerful than him. The world he had imagined didn’t mean anything to anyone else either.  
  
That was the first time he had destroyed a world.  
  
That was why as much as he loved senpai, he was afraid of him. Afraid of getting near him, that if he reached out and touched him he would suddenly feel nothing but nothingness, and realize only a void had been there all along.  
  
Whenever he was around Senpai, he got this feeling. 『 _I want to disappear._ 』Like he was there and not. That the person that he struggled to love the same way that he struggled to love himself, would disappear any moment having rendered all his struggling pointless.

That was the feeling he got anyway, it took awhile to explain because his feelings were complicated. I hope nobody dislikes this new moody narrator, I’m sorry I’m not as funny or clever as Ajimu-san or discount Enoshima-san.

In the time of all his pondering, finally Tsumiki had found what she was looking for. “I’m busy with the hospital after school, you’ll deliver this meal to him won’t you?” Tsumiki Mikan worked at her parents hospital after hours. She had started doing so at high school, and before that she had been raised as a latch key kid. Not that her parents were neglectful or anything, it was normal for a lot of children to be raised that way. Perfectly normal.  
  
However, Komaeda hesitated for a moment. There was another reason he did not like being around Mikan, she had a tendency… if you were putting it nicely to be completely reliant on others.  
  
Komaeda did not want to rely upon others or be relied upon, it would interrupt his role as an observer. “I think Senpai would be happier to see a cute underclassmen than he would me, maybe you can just give it to him earlier…”  
  
“Oh, I see. Even after I patched up all your wounds out of the kindness of my heart you don’t want to do anything for me? So basically I’m nothing to you. I stop existing the moment I stop being useful, right?” A typical Mikan spiral, she grabbed the sides of her face and began to lament again.

The other reason it made him nervous to be around her was that Mikan was a master of the art of passive agression. “Ah… No, I was just thinking it would be a bother if senpai saw my face, but I’d rather both senpai than bother you, Tsumiki-san. A guy like that probably deserves whatever unpleasant encounters and misfortune is coming to him anyway, he’s basically bad karma walking around in human skin.” Komaeda surrendered as he took the box, he had lost the war of self depreciation. Mikan had schooled him once again on who was the student and who the master.  
  
Except he did not walk much these days, because after dropping out of school he barely left te abandoned middle school that he slept in.  
  
His parents still had a home, and they had no problem housing and supporting him until he got back on his feet, Senpai had just insisted on moving out. Even in a normal world with little trouble on a day to day basis, somehow that guy always found or made trouble for himself.

 

😈

  
  
A normal day passed at school. No espes, aliens, or time travelers were to be found. No mysterious transfer students appeared and started a new plot arc. Komaeda had almost fallen asleep in history though, and Fuyuhiko had to kick his desk leg from behind to wake him up.  
  
As school ended, Fuyuhiko and him waited for Zenkichi at the gate. As they watched from afar, Zenkichi was speaking with Hansode, scratching at the back of his head innocently.  
  
“So, do you want to go to dinner just the two of us?” Hansode asked quietly, holding her small hands on her chest.  
  
“Huh? What’s the point of saying ‘just the two of us’ we always go out alone? It’d be murder on my wallet if we invited any more people.”  
  
“Well, yeah I know but more like a special dinner.”  
  
“Why?” Zenkichi continued, another oblivious scratch on his head. “Oh, are they having a special at the ramen stand? Like a sale or something? Did they add a new special to the menu.”  
  
“No, me and you on a date.”  
  
“The date today is the last day of school before golden week, but any day I spend with my best friend is special.”

  
“I want to go out with you.”  
  
“”Wha-we’re already outside though.”

As Fuyuhiko watched the conversation played out with his bag held over his shoulder he nearly flinched from pain. “That’s just brutal.”  
  
“Oh, what are you talking about? Hitoyoshi-kun is really happy talking to his best friend.”  
  
“I guess since you’re the king of only hearing what you want to hear, you  wouldn’t get it.” Fuyuhiko spat back at him.  
  
“I’m hardly a king, but ahhhh that sounds so nice, like Kuzuryuu-san is praising me.” Komaeda side lightly clapping his hands together. “I hope it works out for the two of them. It’s a wonderful thing to see someone find happiness when their dreams come true.”  
  
“As he leaned against the fence, Fuyuhiko’s head turned to Komaeda. “You got any dreams?” He tended to be concerned like that, like a naggy older brother. Well, one that had a family thatkilled people.  
  
“Me?” Komaeda’s eyes widened in surprise, mouth falling open in a small gap. _My dreams are… my happy dreams…_  “No, I’m a nobody. I’m too insignificant to have a dream.”  
  
“Nice dodge.” He looked down out of respect. “You know if you dropped the whole ‘nobody’ act and showed your true colors, I bet you’d make one helluva splash.”  
  
“My colors splashing everywhere? How ugly.” Komaeda’s face suddenly turned unpleasant, for the briefest flash of emotion before he was back to smiling again. “It’s not an act, and I don’t have enough talent to make even a tiny ripple.”  
  
“Have you ever tried?”  
  
Komaeda yawned. “I’ll leave the trying to those who have real talent.” That was what Komaeda had said before falling asleep in history class incidentally, despite all his boasting of being timid and taking the easy way out he was quite bold, falling asleep in front of Fuyuhiko who was a stickler for the rules. A rule following Yakuza, if this were a story that mattered than he was Fuyuhiko would be quite the character.  
  
“Sup losers!” Zenkichi said interrupting them with a beaming smile. It was like taking a spotlight to the face, too much for the already exhausted Komaeda.  
  
“Are you calling us losers?” Fuyuhiko said defensively.  
  
“Finally, Hitoyoshi-kun calls me a loser like I deserved to be called.” Komaeda said, happily.

“I can’t walk home with you guys, Hansode and I are going for ramen.”  
  
“Dude, you go for ramen with her every day I think she wanted to-” Fuyuhiko tried to explain.  
  
However suddenly, Komaeda switched faces again, smiling wide enough to show his teeth and watering fro the corners of his eyes as he took Zenkichi’s warm, and strong feeling hands. “That’s so amazing! Your lifelong dream has finally come true, Hitoyoshi-kun! I”m so, so very happy for you…!”  
  
Fuyuhiko cut through the moment, with his yakuza-like sharpness. “You know she was asking you on a date, right? It’s not nice to ignore a girl’s feelings like that when she puts them on the line.”  
  
“Yeah, what’s wrong HItoyoshi-kun. I thought princess types were exactly your type of woman.” Komaeda said, still holding onto Zenkichi’s hand a moment longer than he needed to.  
  
“Uhh… Shit, you caught me.” The normally bold Zenkichi suddenly made a weak looking face. “Well, she’s always trolling us, but you know she’s smart, and also from a really rich family. “  
  
“So what you’re saying is she’s too good for you?” Fuyuhiko said, as he put his hand on his hip.  
  
“Damn straight she is! I’m just… I’m just a normal guy. Anybody who looked at us could tell I’m not worth one second of her time, the divide between us is too great I could never catch up with her… No matter how many times I turn it over in my head, for some reason it just feels wrong.”  
  
Hansode, no last name. An orphan with no particular background, she was adopted into a rich family and raised as one of their own. Her older brother Hanten is the first born son and heir so he takes care of most of the family matters, leaving Hansode to live life as a mostly normal girl free of any burdens. When she was younger she had no food to eat, so in her teenage years she was constantly eating but other than that and a spoiled girl’s playful personality she had no major quirks.  
  
Hitoyoshi and Hansode had gotten along since they met on the first day of class, becoming instant best friends. Even Komaeda who had lived with him since he was two years old could not call him a best friend. He thought they got along well, he wanted them to be happy together so why… what was missing… “You’re acting unlike your normal self, Hitoyoshi-kun…you’d never stop chasing someone no matter how far the gap is between you.”  
  
As he said that suddenly, the bells in Komaeda’s head became more intense. There was a lot of empty space in his head, there was probably missing brain matter, or parts that were deformed and did not grow to proper size, so words often echoed around easily and bounced around long after they were wanted. He suddenly felt another of his random headaches, as the shaking of his head increased.  
  
When he closed his eyes he saw a scene. Him standing out in the rain, cold and alone as he tried to listen to the sound of bells over the rainwater. Then suddenly a warm hand took him and guided him out of the rain. He wanted to show his thanks, so he took a towel and slowly, reverently, wiped off his feet. He wondered how well he would have to clean that boy’s skin before the marks of his sin disappeared. Not just his feet, he wanted to wipe the towel slowly over every part of him.  
  
Suddenly, Fuyuhiko was staring at his face and he was brought back to reality. “Dude, you okay? I mean it’s normal for you to zone out, but even by your standards that was especially weird.”  
  
“I’m always exceeding your expectations, I’m so glad Kuzuryuu-san. That way you can never get bored of me being around you.” Komaeda said, almost like an automatic reply.  
  
Zenkichi was watching him with a satisfied grin on his face. “I bet he was daydreaming about his soul mate again.”  
  
“Mrrrrrp….” Komaeda did not have a response prepared, so he made an embarrassed noise, like the mewling of a cat.  
  
“Hey, I thought you said you didn’t have dreams!” Fuyuhiko said, glaring at the other boy.  
  
“Umm, you haven’t noticed that Komaeda is a liar by now? He’s a total unreliable narrator.” Zenkichi said, pointing a finger at the forehead of the other boy.  
  
Hey.  
Mean.  
  
Zenkichi continued. “Lately he’s been having dreams about tall, dark, and mysterious. He’s totally going to meet him in real life and fall in love, his soul mate.”  
  
“For a guy that’s oblivious to love you sure are a romanticist, Hitoyoshi-kun.’ Komaeda said back, sharpening his tongue again a she pulled it to the corner of his lips and pulled his lips tight until they were thin red lines. “Let’s stop talking about things that don’t matter like me and go back to ragging on Hitoyoshi-kun about his problems.”

“Yeah pissing off Zenkichi is more fun, he fights back at least.” Fuyuhiko said, turning his glare back on the other boy.  
  
“Hitoyoshi-kun it’s talent that you desire isn’t it? Compared to a princess type girl you’re inconsequential, and that makes you anxious. I understand that feeling.” Komaeda suddenly grew serious.

“Jesus who gives a shit about talent? It doens’t matter a damn bit. For god’s sake, just face her head on. I thought you were a manlier guy than this, Zenkichi.” Fuyuhiko said, raising his voice.  
  
“Your machismo could be considered a sort of talent as well, Kuzuryuu-san.” Komaeda said.  
  
“If you think I’m manly you should see my sister.” Fuyuhiko spat back.  
  
“Alright fine, us normal guys without talent what do we do, Komaeda?” Zenkichi said looking at the other boy.  
  
Komaeda smiled, a simple smile hoping all things in the world were that simple. “Find happiness.” He curled his fingers again, as if wrapping them around individual invisible strings in the air. “The vast majority of society consists of talentless nobodies, but they’ve still managed to find some degree of happiness. See, you don’t need talent. Talent is merely a shackle, and the greater it is the more it obstructs your happiness. Even if Hansode is from a rich family, even if she’s the cloistered princess type that doesn’t mean she has a happy life. Life’s plus minus, is zero.”  
  
“That’s… a good point. Maybe I should talk to her about it honestly, instead of avoiding it. Maybe together we’ll be able to figure out what it is, that’s missing.” As he spoke of his missing thing, despite how reassured he was something seemed empty about Zenkichi’s words.  
  
They parted and headed in opposite directions. Komaeda and Fuyuhiko walking home together as Fuyuhiko casually held his bag over his shoulder. Komaeda was happy enough just to watch the small repetitive motions of Fuyuhiko’s bag bouncing up and down, and Fuyuhiko’s perpetually grumpy face in side profile.  
  
Fuyuhiko spoke up first. As others always spoke up first Komaeda only passively reacted to them. “I’m impressed. Guess not everything that comes outta your mouth is noise.”  
  
“Now that’s harsh.”  
  
“Have you heard yourself when you start rambling? You’re so far off-the-wall it’s scary.”

  
“No, there must be a problem with my ears. I’ll add it to thelist of many other things that’s wrong with me.” Komaeda reached forward and swirled part of his swirling white hair in his finger, curling it around.  
  
“Well you landed this one perfectly. I suppose.” Fuyuhiko stopped, turning his head to the other boy as they walked along the roadside.  
  
“I suppose?” Komaeda stopped too. As much as he hated meeting the eyes of others, it felt natural to look into Fuyuhiko’s in that moment.  
  
Then, click. They both raised their hands and hit their knuckles against one another. It was the normal thing to do in this situation. Komaeda was so happy that he had understood that basic social signal even with his faulty receiver, that he was ecstatic. He danced away holding his arms wide at his waste. “Ahhh, if only the world were free of talent.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Think about it. If Hansode had just been born a normal girl, then Zenkichi wouldn’t have had to worry about working hard enough to earn her love.”  
  
“Uh, I guess?”  
  
“I…” Komaeda turned around. Suddenly, he let a little bit of the coldness that permeated his being show on his face. It was a mistake showing an unpleasant face to others, it was surely a mistake but he could not help it when unpleasant emotion welled up inside of him. He was an unpleasant existence at his core after all, and all he could do was spend his time continually repressing himself not engaging with others, and not being engaged with them so he did not interfere in their happiness. However, even that had its limits. As much as he hated it, he had the occasional reminder that he was human. Flesh and bone and not digital. “I despise talent. Were I able, I would erase all talent from the world entirely.” His motions were slow and mechanical as he swiveled around, like the tin man rebuilt without a heart who had forgotten how human emotinos worked, and whose own tears rusted up his joints. He took one slow step after another, closing the distance between him and Fuyuhiko at a pace that looked like a horror movie villain. He was sure with his white hair and deathly pale looks he would not be out of place appearing on the poster of a slasher movie. “WIthout talent, everyone would be able to lead modest lives, find a modest amount of happiness, don’t you think that would be wonderful?” He leaned over Fuyuhiko with his superior height, casting a shadow over him as he put a hand on the wall behind them blocking the other boy’s escape.  
  
“Oi, Komaeda you bullying my little bro again.” Suddenly, a girl appeared. She had Fuyuhiko’s exact face, except on her the soft, round and cute looks fitted her appearance. SHe had the same color hair as well, except hers was longer. The heir to the Kuzuryuu clan, Fuyuhiko Natsumi. His protective and strong younger sister.  
  
“Back off…” Fuyuhiko said.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I said back off already.” Fuyuhiko despite looking like a growling mutt in that moment, only softly put a hand on Komaeda’s chest and gently pushed him away. For a gangster, he was surprisingly respectful of fragile things. “Sorry about my sister she feels the need to stand up for me since she was always standing in between me and my parents.”

Komaeda merely stared, in his empty gaze he was trying to figure out when his switch had been flipped the wrong way, and where he had gone wrong. It was like reviewing the steps of a dance backwards in his head, when he had two left feet, to try to find where and when he had stepped on Fuyuhiko’s toe.  
  
“I take it back- you’re still a creep.” Fuyuhiko said, walking ahead without looking back.  
  
Komaeda suddenly became afraid of what sort of eyes Fuyuhuiko would show him in that moment. Trying to check himself and process was not working, so instead another catlike smile appeared across his face as he tried to load up a new way to react, a more appropriate one. Even for a clueless guy like him. Innocently, he scratched at his cheek, and curled his finger. “Oh, uh, I’m sorry.”  
  
“I mean it’s fine, it’s who you are.” The eyes that Fuyuhiko looked back with were surprisingly gentle. “Anyway whaddaya say we grab a drink.”  
  
“Uh, we’re still in highschool.”  
  
“They’re non alcoholic.”  
  
“Uhh….” Komaeda still felt hesitant. Getting invited to hang out, not just as an obligation? That would mean Fuyuhiko wanted him around as an individual, as a distinct entity. He worried and worried.  
  
Until Fuyuhiko spoke up again. “I don’t want you walking home alone anyway, there have been some rumors. Apparently a blonde terrorist is hiding out in our small town. Knowing your bad luck you’re bound to run into them, because you always somehow meet the worst person possible at the worst time possible. It’s a talent of your own.”  
  
“What a vague… and phony rumor.” Komaeda accidentally let slip his honest impression. “Why would there be a terrorist in an ordinary town in the middle of nowhere like ours?”  
  
“Who knows.” Fuyuhiko shrugged. “Lil sis back there warned me about it.”  
  
“That’s right the only blonde you need in your life is your little sister!” Natsumi said, still trailing behind them from a safe distance.  
  
“The boys reported back that the terrorist is a beautiful blonde woman, but with eyes so cold they could make your spine freeze.”  
  
Komaeda put a finger on his lips. “Well that shouldn’t be a problem for me, since I’m completely spineless. I don’t see why some random teenager would be a terrorist, couldn’t she be a normal person that just stands out because she has blonde hair?”  
  
“Well, you’re right she’s probably a dye job.” Fuyuhiko said, “Still a guy like you is no good on your own.”  
  
“Sorry, to turn you down but I made plans first.” Komaeda said as he held up his lunch box. He knew Fuyuhiko had only said that with the best of intentions. “I’ve got to bring food to my senpai like a good underclassmen.”

  
“You’re not being bullied again, are you?” Fuyuhiko tilted his head.  
  
“No, I think I’d rather this person bully me than show me kindess but eugh, he’s probably going to be nice to me.” Komaeda sighed, or rather he unintentionally let a sigh escape from his lips ruining his pleasant goodbyes. “You should spoil your little sister a little more, after all family can find happiness together as long as they’re still around.”  
  
Ending on an enigmatic statement on purpose, that boy who made confusion into an art form so well he confused himself just as much as others, departed turning his back and disappearing until he became a white silhouette on the horizon.  
  
Whenever he looked at Komaeda from a distance like that, Fuyuhiko could not shake the feeling that it was like a shinigami appearing on the edge of his vision, watching him and slowly stalking him until his day came.  
  
It was this death like quality that made him want to accept Komaeda even if no one else would, because he knew the feeling of being utterly alone because the kind of life you were born into was too bad for most good folk to get caught up in.

😈

 

『Nagito-chan I have a complaint.』  
  
“You have a complaint for everything, senpai.”  
  
『You make it sound like I’m grumpy, you’re getting my character all wrong, I take everything in stride with a smile, I do everything with a smile...』

  
“And you complain about everything with a smile on your face.”

『See that’s right… no, wait that’s not what I meant to say!』Kumagawa Misogi sat up finally and spread his legs on the edge of the desk he was sitting on. He had tied several desks together to function as a bed. Komaeda sat in a dilapidated middle school room, with white cloths that covered every piece of furniture besides the desks. The place was the very picture of death, and that was a lot coming from Komaea who was macabre by nature. 『This series is about quick paced banter, but there’s nobody to banter with, so the narrator just rambles on and on between the dialogue.』  
  
“Senpai, I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is why you shouldn’t spend all day alone talking to yourself in an abandoned building.”  
  
I did know what he was talking about, and I thought it was rather rude. Kumagawa Misogi was a stupid face. No, wait I can be more mature than him. Kumagawa Misogi had a child looking face, his cheeks were round, his eyes pools of dark blue like indiscernible water you could stare into and never tell its true depths. His hair was shaggy and parted more to one side, he had twin antannaes small ones extending from the part in his hair at the center of his head, and he wore an old black uniform from last year, unbuttoned and disheveled with the tie missing.  
  
Just like this room, he looked like he belonged in the realm of the dead too. A stretch of water so still it had become stagnant, it stank of something foul. Kumagawa and Komaeda stared at one another. Each of them staring at the other side of the still water.    
  
An optimist that sounded like a pessimist.  
A pessimist that sounded like an optimist.  
A boy with a pitch black shadow of a silhouette with a pure white smile.  
A boy with a pure white silhouette that could not smile properly without alarming others.  
  
Both of them stared at one another, in silence as if they feared that if one of them moved it would ripple the still water and cause the other to disappear. If the other disappeared then surely a world would be destroyed and that was unforgivable.

However, Kumagawa’s hunger won out and he raised his hand. As he raised his hand, Koameda could swear he heard the jingle of chains. He picked up the lunch box that Komaeda had brought and started to messily eat with his bare hands.  
  
A rude boy and a polite boy.  
Or rather  
A boy who cared far too much about the opinions of others and a boy that didn’t care at all.  
  
『So anyway to continue complaining....』  
  
“Do you always have to force your unpleasantness on others, senpai?”  
  
『That was just an excuse! I just want to spend time talking with my beloved kouhai!』  
  
“Talking should be enjoyable for both people.”  
  
Another shallow clown, a common breed, Kumagawa Misogi laughed. 『I’m having lots and lots of fun so far, how about you?』

“I don’t know, whether I have fun or not is irrelevant.”

『Fine, fine, I’ll be a good senpai for once. What do you want to talk about?』  
  
“For the first time.”

『Nagito-chan always shows his petty side just for me, it’s so pretty, pretty petty, petty pretty.』  
  
“Yeah so…” Komaeda gripped his head again, thinking of the conversation that he had earlier, with the two other boys who called themselves his friend. Whether he required such a feeling he did not know yet, he simply wanted to stay undecided not getting too close or drifting too far away from either boy. “Let’s talk about love. Oh, but I guess you’re a terrible person to ask about that, since the girl you loved jumped off the roof last year.”  
  
Komaeda said with his trademark insensitivity.  
Kumagawa responded with his trademark smile.

『Yep, yep, I’m a special kind of senpai. Just do the opposite of whatever advice I give you, that’s the path to true happiness.』  
  
Kumagawa Misogi was a thoughtful and attentive senpai who looked after his younger classmates. He often skipped school and interfered in others business, and because of that got into endless trouble trying to help others.  
  
Then one day, his girlfriend threw herself off the roof of the school building.  
  
The next day Kumagawa MIsogi whose only aspiration was to graduate without repeating a year, stopped showing up to school, and moved out of his parent’s house to spend all of his time sleeping in an abandoned middle school classroom that was slowly decaying away. He barely left, once Komaeda did not visit him for two weeks and found him almost starving to death. Every time he thought of him, Komaeda’s heart fluttered with worry, being close to such a person was painful, it was agonizing, but Komaeda could not bring himself to give up on this person either.  
  
“I’ve never been in love before…” Komaeda’s fingers curled into his hair, starting to shake. “Lately though, I’ve been having dreams where I’m with a faceless boy and it feels like… a half that I had forgotten was missing came back to me again.”

『Are you sure he’s faceless? Maybe his face is just so boring it’s hard to remember.』  
  
“He’s not boring!” Komaeda suddenly snapped. It was rare for him to raise his voice, even in comedic banter situations, but for some reason he knew that boy he did not remember would feel awful if somebody called him forgettable. “Am I… am I terrible for forgetting him?”

Komaeda had drawn closer to Kumagawa without even realizing it. Kumagawa’s oddly shaped and rough hands reached out for him, cupping both of his cheeks. 『Nagito-chan, you’re just thinking of your own happiness for once. You’re not wrong.』  
  
“I feel like… I was always just thinking of my own selfish desires and forcing them onto others.”

『No, you didn’t...』His voice fell to a whisper. 『Nagito-chan is so considerate, you were always thinking of others.』

“Only because I wanted them to look my way.”

『Everyone wants that. You’re no different from everyone else.』  
  
“Yeah I’m… I’m just a face in the crowd. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing…” As his face was held by Kumagawa he noticed how much he had come to let himself drape over Kumagawa. It was terrifying how comfortable he had become. It was like cozying up to himself. He did not want to feel comfortable with himself, even for a minute, because he knew he did not deserve it. “Hey, Kumagawa-senpai, what is love like?”

『Ah… It’s everything. I guess.』  
  
_Then I’m nothing…_ Komaeda thought, but he did not say it. He changed the subject instead. “Hey, I’m worried… There’s a rumor of a terrorist in town, maybe you shouldn’t be sleeping in abandoned buildings. What if they make this their hideout?”

『Teenage terrorists, what is this a manga? Even if there were such people, it’s not any of your concern. Just leave it alone, you’re not the main character, and nobody would like a main character who relies only on luck in the first place.』  
  
Those words were denying his entire existence, but being denied was more comforting to Nagito than being accepted. He finally stopped leaning on his senpai and stood up on his own. He needed to get home on time to clean again. He was a failure at many things, but he did not want to be a failure of a house husband.  
  
As he stood in the doorway though, Komaeda glanced back and finally realized there was another person in the room. “Umm… Hi. Senpai, what’s a girl doing here? Did you kidnap someone?”

『There’s no way I’d do something like that! What kind of image do you have of me!』

“If I told you, you’d just whine more.”

『I don’t whine! Blame my voice actor my voice is just naturally this high pitched! It’s a part of their style!』Kumagawa kicked his legs, before settling. 『I would never do anything bad towards a girl, you know pervert characters aren’t as popular in jump these days. She’s a relative of somebody close to me, I’m watching over her for their sake.』  
  
“I see…” For some reason, despite that excuse being utter nonsense Komaeda did not feel like questioning it. Kumagawa’s entire existence was nonsense, it was basically a weapon to him at this point.  
  
When he finally left, the girl with the paperbag around her head lifted up and stared at him through the same cut out holes. “Are you sure you’re alright with this? By clinging to happiness, he’s becoming more passive, and less and less like the Komaeda-senpai that you love.”

『How come you only talk when other people aren’t around? You’re the reason why everybody thinks I’m a crazy guy who talks to himself all day.』  
  
“I think your own characterization is your fault. It’s not good to blame others, seeeeeenpaaaii.” The faceless girl said. “Besides, adults are scary. I get shy around them. I only like people my own age, I’m only seven years old you know.”

『You always use that as an excuse! For a seven year old you’re sure going through a rebellious phase!』  
  
Those two were always bickering.  
Because they hated each other.  
It was different from the good natured banter he had in the past.  
They were genuinely trying to sink their teeth into one another.

However, they were still tied together.  
A chain from his wrist extended all the way to hers, and screws secured them in place.

 

😈

 

“I don’t understand you.”

『I’m not that hard to understand, I’m just a normal cute boy, with a cute smile.』  
  
“You won’t leave that middle school for food, but you’ll leave it to buy manga.” The faceless girl complained, her face still covered in a mask as she trailed behind them in a crowd of faceless people, insignificant npcs not even worth describiing.

『I can go a few weeks without food before I starve, I’m used to it.』That was Kumagawa MIsogi’s most commonly used phrase, I’m used to it. 『If I were to go just one week without shonen jump, my soul would starve.』

“Bold of you to assume you have a soul.”

『Bold of you to use new memes like that, you copycat.』  
  
“Hey, senpai.”

『What?』  
  
“Can you change your face a little bit? I don’t really like being stared at with such scorn, that is to say it’s not an enjoyable kind of despair.”

『Oh, which part of my face should I change?』  
  
“All of it.”

『That’s impossible! Hey, hey, you’re the one walking around with a paper bag on her face that’s even more attention drawing.』He fell to her petty games, and even made a show of pointing at her, you know like a mature person.  
  
“It’s not my fault. It seems you’ve forgotten you ripped my face off.”

『All I did was take your makeup off.』  
  
“Uh, that’s basically the same thing, duh? Can you imagine me being seen in public without makeup? Gag.”

The banter would have continued, if it were not for Kumagawa suddenly and by chance brushing up against the shoulder of another. He turned his head just in time to see something flash past his eyes.  
  
“Senpai, senpai!” A similar voice but different to the faceless girl called out. “Mi! So! GI! Senpai! I came all the way down here to find you! Can you actually imagine me wanting to see a guy like you again? Doesn’t that just make you want to just drown in despair? Me, putting one of my perfect hands in the muckity muck to reach out to you of all people? Wasting my one and only spider’s thread on you? I guess it’s your fault for falling in love with a spider, but like one of those metaphorically hot spiders like the black widow.”  
  
Suddenly, a voice was ranting behind him.  
  
“Come on senpai! I don’t wanna sound all stalkery, but gimme a huggy, huggy!” She screamed like an energetic girl, then suddenly threw her arms around him from behind.  
  
However, besides feeling a momentary nudge when she bumped into him a moment ago, Kumagawa MIsogi did not see or hear any of it. That is to say, as usual he saw nothing, and was nothing.  
  
“Senpai, don’t go staring off into space like that. If you stop then I stop.” The faceless girl said, jangling the chain that connected their wrist.

『I just… remember an old line from a poem I like.』Kumagawa let out a cold breath, it looked like a part of his soul was escaping from his mouth, he wanted to seal his lips shut and let anything else escape but he could not. 『Sorry, I have a feeling that we won’t see each other again. Destiny is laughing at us.』

  
As he said that, the claws that had dug into his back, that were holding onto him tight enough to dig into his skin and pull beautiful red colors from it, slowly loosened and then let go. Kumagawa was able to walk forward again, leaving that girl behind.  
  
“What’s up with the sudden moody monologue?” The faceless girl asked. “It’s just not right when comedic types like you suddenly get too self serious, it totes makes my skin crawl.”

The moment he was by her side again, Kumagawa did not bother to banter back. He simply leaned all his weight on her.『Hey, Ryokai-chan. Carry me home. I want to sleep the rest of the way.』  
  
“All you ever do is sleep.”

『I live a very tiring life.』  
  
“All you ever do is read manga.”

『I’m a very active and responsive reader, it takes a lot out of me.』  
  
“I’m not carrying you home, you louse.”

『Fine, fine, I’ll sleep walk home. I can’t sleep again, Faceless girl tell me a story.』  
  
“A story? Well Monokuma lived in a village of-”

『No, not that one. Tell me a story that only you could tell.』  
  
“A story I would tell you always ask for such nonsensical things… And so the boy fell in love.”  
  
Kumagawa turned around and looked over his shoulder. There was a girl standing there watching him but he could not see her. Yet still, he stared at the exact same empty spot of air she was standing in as if he wished her to be there.  
  
“Yes, he fell fiercely and passionately in love with the girl who he had met just by accident. Neither of them were meant to be characters in each other’s stories. As he walked alongside her, he knew that if he stayed by her side, and forever wed his unutterable nonsense words to her perishable breath, his world would never be able to return to its previous state of being. So he waited, listening for a little longer, to the grey background noise that always filled the world around him. The senseless, ugly, noise that had always plagued him suddenly became music to him. So, he leaned in and kissed her, and both of them died in that moment, and in that moment both of them were reborn.”

Kumagawa’s lips trembled for a moment as he gazed at empty space, as if something inside of it had been made to not exist he was reminded of something - an elusive rhythmn, a a fragment of lost words he heard somewhere sometime ago, he tried to make it take shape in his mouth. His lips parted like a dumb man and he struggled with it, but they made no sound, and whatever he wanted to say was lost and became nothing more than more nonsense.  
  
『...』  
  
“Give me some reader feedback.”  
  
The girl who was watching him without being seen had already thrown a tantrum and run away. So, he was left with the girl with no face.

『Good, a love story. I like those.』  
  
“The author deceived you, at first it seems like just another repetitive shounen but it becomes a love story.”

『How unexpected. You’re a good narrator.』  
  
“I’ve gotten bored of narrating though, a third tier character like Komaeda-senpai can take over for all I care.”  
  
Hey.  
  
『Is there any more?』  
  
"What more needs to be told. The world continued to spin."

As they continued to talk, the blonde girl was running in the opposite direction. She had confronted him on a whim, and now she was feeling the unexpected aftereffects of that whim. She was a fully grown girl, dressed in a red and black uniform whose curves accentuated how much of an adult body she had and yet at the same time, she could barely handle any of her emotions like a child.  
  
She overflowed with them.  
She was a brat, basically.  
  
She threw a tantrum and ran away when things did not go the least bit her way, but she hated when things went her way just as much. Everybody in the crowd was nothing more than mechncial pre progammed dolls to her, like the empty shells that were programmed into a video game and resticted to pre-planned routes and a certain limited number of reactions.  
  
She ran through them, wishing she could stomp over all of them. If toys were not interesting to her, she destroyed them, that was the kind of terrible girl she was. And because she was so terrible she had ended up all alone.  
  
However, eventually running she ran into the one who was also alone with her. He stood tall above her, an imposing figure with red eyes, even though his hair had been cut to a short and spiky look. He wore the same suit that he always did, but there was something not right about his appearance, even though he was tall, dark, sleek and handsome no matter what angle you looked at something was missing. It was like he was half there and half gone.  
  
Two bright target eyes glowed at her. Depsite being taller though, he was not any more mature. In a petty way, he said. “I told you that wasn’t going to work.” He had just let it happen, because he wanted to say I told you so. He was passive like that. Even things he knew would fail from the beginning, he had a habit of just watching them without interfering.

『 That’s frustrating isn’t it… The world ignores me, and keeps on spinning no matter how much I want to stop, or to just end it all now. 』

“So the world continues to spin.”

Junko leaned on the much taller man, like he was a pole for her to drape off of. “Hinaaaataaaa-senpai! I’m bored now. Why didn’t senpai notice me? Like, how could he not I'm me.”

As Izuru moved for the first time, red squares trailed his small and subtle movements. “That’s confusing to me as well, as you are quite loud.”  
  
“Ugh, you’re useless.”

“Hm? Didn’t you used to flirt with me all the time? What’s with you? Lately all you do is insult me.” Izuru said, staring at her with his eyes, even glowing bright red they somehow managed to look cold.  
  
“Yeah, but it’s no fun unless Misogi-senpai is looking, and getting all filled with despair at the thought of losing me." As she talked about another, she got so overcome with emotion she embraced herself and shivered with it. Kamukura observed her with dull eyes still, the fact that he once claimed to understand her made him feel like this was divine punishment for making such a claim filled with hubris. She had been restrained and focused until a moment ago, and now she was just joking around and acting like herself again, like everything she was doing in this digital world was nothing more than a whim, a precalculated whim though as they had been planning this for months. He would have to watch her even more closely, which was annoying because he was chained to be the babysitter of someone he disliked. As he continued to contemplate, Junko rudely spoke over his inner monolgoue. “Besides if you enjoy it because being infected with that dumbass’s personality made you attention hungry, then it totally ruins the joke.”  
  
“The joke? There was a joke…? Ah, attention hungry? Is that my characterization now?” Hinata Izuru tilted his head one way, and then the other, as if bits and pieces of his brain were sloshing together in a mixture and he was trying to mix it a little more until it became more consistent. “We’re on the deepest layer, I told you it would be awhile before we could interact.”  
  
“I would have listened but I got booored.” She whined again. Suddenly, her expression too dropped away from its usual energetic girliness and as the corners of her eyes twisted she looked quite cold too. “Well, a world where senpai ignores me is no good. There’s no saving it. I have no choice to destroy it.”  
  
“...That’s your solution to everything. Jeez…” For a moment, Hajime’s expasperated expression was present on his face before he walked ahead. “World destroyer, at least try to keep it in check, I already told you we can’t kill them, and don’t say I got bored so I didn’t listen again.”  
  
“Well then why don’t you have this entire boring exposition dump by yourself if I can’t use the word boring?” She tugged at his arm. “Pleeeease, can’t I just kill them a little bit?”  
  
Izuru sighed again. “How does one kill someone a little bit?” His voice, no his entire existence was dry, the vampire known as Enoshima Junko had dug her fangs into him and left him a shriveled up completely dry existence. Yet he continued to exist.  
  
“You’re the most boring terrorist, like the worst ever.”  
  
“You’re the only one who aspires to be good at being a terrorist, Enoshima.” Hinata quickly said back, before the two of them had spotted the boy they were tailing before Junko ran off on her own and Izuru did nothing to stop her.  
  
A boy with blonde spiky hair.  
A boy who looked like the main character of this story.  
HItoyoshi Zenkichi.  
  
It was not Junko, but Kamukura however who made the first move. He approached from behind, wrapping his arms around the boy, like an inky black shadow that had come to wrap its tenderils around him and consume him.

Zenkichi wanted to struggle back, but that boy did not do anything to him. All Izuru did was whisper into his ear.  
  
“Kurokami Medaka is waiting for you."  
  
That was enough.  
Suddenly, Hiyosohi Zenkichi remembered what it was that he had forgotten, why this world was so empty for him, why he was fundamentally lacking as a person. Without her around, there was something that made him, him, that was missing.  
People see themselves in others, they disappear when there’s no one to interact with.  
All alone, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi disappeared from this world, without leaving a single trace behind.  
That was just a metaphor though, he left behind his bloodied uniform jacket because those two terrorists needed a crime scene.  
  
At that exact moment, Hansode waited for a boy to treat her to ramen who would never come.  
  
Several hours later, Komaeda Nagito was waiting on the doorstep to his house. “It’s unlike Htioyoshi-kun to stay out this late, has he suddenly become a delinquent?” Komaeda knew there was no reason to worry, because Zenkichi was a much stronger more worthy existence than he was.  
  
Yet, he found himself sitting on the stairway that led up to their house, clutching his knees as he waited.  
  
In the distance he could hear bells again.  
  
“Are they funeral bells… haha, shut up and stop being so morbid Komaeda…”

Then, suddenly he whispered.  
  
“It’s like… the bell of fate rings. It's ringing for me... nah, no way would it ring for me.”

That night Hitoyoshi Zenkichi never returned home, and Komaeda fell asleep on the stairs like a lost white cat curled up waiting for him.


	2. Risky Survival Strategy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another Zaregoto reference this chapter!

Hitoyoshi Zenkichi’s funeral portrait was a picture from the beginning of this year that he and Hansode took together. She reached up and pinched his cheek, while he did the same. Nagito Komaeda found it odd how quickly those two became friends, less than a year.  
  
He had the feeling even if he had an entire normal life span he would never get that close to another human being. Friend was difficult enough, he could barely say the word but ‘best friend’ he would probably choke on those words before he said them.  
  
It had been different for Hitoyoshi Zenkichi and Hansode. When he asked her for her notes to study she would give him the wrong notes on purpose and cause him to fail the exam. When he asked her to cover for him because he needed to leave class to help someone, she would raise her hand immediately the moment the teacher walked into the room and announce Hitoyoshi Zenkichi was absent. If Hitoyoshi told her a secret, the whole school would know about it sooner or later. They both went out to buy ramen, and Hansode would eat both of their bowls and then make Hitoyoshi pay for it.  
  
Hitoyoshi sighed several times and Hansode got the nickname of worst best friend ever. Yet, no matter how many times those two argued and fought they were always closer for it. Komaeda did not want to know what the difference was, what he was fundamentally lacking in, no he already knew it was just painful to admit. _When Hansode hurts others, it’s on purpose. She knows she’s doing it._

Sometimes Nagito Komaeda wondered if he had full control, and full knowledge, if he knew more than others did rather than always lagging behind, failing to pick up on cues, socially and in all other aspects what actions would he be like? If he had talent, what would he use that talent to do?   _A stupid thing to wonder. You would probably just hurt others, it’s not a matter of good luck or bad luck, good experiences or bad experiences, good brain or bad brain, talented or untalented it’s simply who you are as a person._

That was why despite having lived in the same household and walked to school with Zenkichi every day, he was not standing in front row of the mourners. He hid amongst the crowd instead as another face in them. Several people had shown up, even some of the students who bullied him last year, a faceless mob of mourners.

Komaeda could only stand to make it through about half the ceremony. He slipped through the crowd and left out the back door. Sometimes, when people did not want to make a fuss in front of others they left to cry in private but that was not what Komaeda was doing. The most his face could manage was a small tightening of his thin lips into a frown.  
  
Because what he felt was not sadness. It would be a disgrace to the human emotion of sadness to call it that. It was a feeling of loss like the loss of gravity, the loss of all color, all noise and sound, like his body simply wanted to reject all sensation.

That morning, a man dressed in a black suit appeared before him. “Hitoyoshi Zenkichi is dead.”

Then, he simply walked away. Komaeda let him. He felt neither rage towards the injustice of his death, nor sadness towards the news. He did not even remember the face of the person who had told him. Simply that feeling of loss. He was keeping the hole inside of him covered wit the warmth that was Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, and then suddenly the bandages were torn off and the wound was exposed again.

 _Loss._ _  
_ _Zenkichi._ _  
_ _I lost you._ _  
_ _Once again…_

He did not even question the again. Rather than sadness at Zenkichi, the pain he must have suffered to die, the loneliness that was death, all he could feel was abandonment, set adrift. Zenkichi must have chosen to leave him. Again and again, just like everybody else they chose to leave him behind.  
  
Logically, he knew that was not the case though. And he felt shame for feeling presumptuous enough to miss Zenkichi’s presence from his life, to assume Zenkichi would want to be around him. That shame became chains heavier than anything else, too heavy to even move, so he sat on the outside of the building.  
  
The sensation of heaviness, the sensation of weightlessness, both of them were too much to bear so of course his body cycled between them wildly. If he had to state his feelings, he would say that despite Zenkichi being somebody the whole school came to mourn, despite him dying as someone everybody loved, Komaeda felt no love in that room at all.  
  
That’s right there was no love in death, none at all. The only thing he felt was a reminder of his own emptiness.  
  
Then suddenly, a bottle was thrown at his head. “Hey, Komaeda. You look like a corpse right now how about we bury you with that idiot Hitoyoshi?”  
  
The bullies that had picked on him last year. Beacuse he had stepped out of the crowd he was standing out again. “God what’s with that awful face you’re making? A creepy kid like you doesn’t even know how to cry at a funeral correclty.”  
  
Komaeda had been so lost in thought he had lost sight of his own face. He had no idea at all, how he was reacting to it. What he was showing and what he was concealing, what mask he wore.  
  
“It’s probably your fault he died, you goddamn Shinigami. There’s a reason only Yakuza hang out with you, look what happened to a normal good guy like Zenkichi.”

There was a reason Komaeda had been bullied for so long in the past. It was because when people hurled insults at him like this, he did not find it within himself to disagree. In the past when his he was kicked, when his head was forced down to the floor to bow, when he was dragged across the floor and thrown by his hair his only reaction to this, and in this situation too on the day of Zenkichi funeral he only had one reaction inside of him. His reaction to this and everything else, he finally turned his head back to them and laughed softly, a hollow laughter that echoed through the empty caverns of his body, there was so little meat between his bones he could hear them rattling.  
  
“What kind of guy laughs at a funeral? Goddamn creepy.”  
  
“If you had been the one to die rather than Hitoyoshi everybody would be better off, why don’t you disappear already?”

Cruel words, but because they were telling him things he already knew, Komaeda just continued to laugh at the redundancy of those statements.  
  
The funeral was being watched by two more observers. Observers was the best term to define them, though they had taken to calling themselves _terrorists_ in a dramatic fashion. Enoshima Junko still dressed in a black and red uniform, and Hinata Izuru wearing the black and white suit and tie he always wore. It had been raining outside, so Izuru stood holding an umbrella over Junko’s head. That kind of arrangement worked out as Enoshima Junko was a diva who expected others to do everything for her (diva and master manipulator were interchanable terms) and Izuru liked the soft repetitive sensation of the rain falling down upon him, the way it slicked his spiky hair down, and the steady rhythmn of noises it made.  
  
“Well, it looks like your plan to break him didn’t work, big guy.” Enoshima Junko said, standing with her arms crossed over her ample chest.  
  
“I see. Maybe I should have run up to him and acted awkwardly like everything was normal and tried to drag him back by hand like a true strategic mastermind.” Izuru Hinata merely reflected her own accusations back at her like a mirror.

“Oi, that was just on purpose. I wreck my plans all the time on purpose you know.”  
  
“That was weird though even by your standards, Enoshima.”  
  
“I don’t think a guy who has glowing red target eyes, who took hair care tips from the grudge girl and spends all day staring watching paint dry in his room has any business calling me a weird girl.”

“I don’t watch the paint dry, I watch the shadows from the windows lengthen, and it’s relaxing. A necessity after having to deal with your high pitched and irritating screams all day.” 

“Ssssh, I know how to whisper. I just play the role of a loud and obnoxious teenage girl on purpose, it’s part of my image y’know.”  
  
“That’s a very convenient excuse you keep using, I suppose it’s easy to claim everything was on purpose after the fact, but still stop distracting me.”  
  
“Awe, but distractions are the best.”

“That’s what I mean, after Kurokami Medaka told us to cooperate on this project together I thought you would resist it with every fiber of your being, and instead you simply went ‘okay.’ Then you actually did your half of the programming work, enough that I thought it would be managable to bring you here. Yet, the moment we reached the lowest level you ran off on your own and acted illogically. That’s the first time I’ve seen you act that energetic in months.”  
  
“I’m only helping you out because neither you nor Kurokami Medaka could do this. The only one who can destroy the world is me, Enoshima Junko.”  
  
“Yes, you’re the only one who can destroy the world in a childish tantrum. How special of you.” The usually expressionless Izuru was able to display his irritation in that moment quite well. He felt proud of himself, slowly he was learning. “You were just being impatient again weren’t you?”  
  
“Ehhh???”  
  
“You don’t know how to deal with situations where people don’t give you exactly what you want the moment you want it. You know how to manipulate people, but not to confront them, and definitely not to communicate. So, when Kumagawa resisted you, you just put on that ridiculous act like everything was normal and threw a loud tantrum trying to get him to notice you.”  
  
“What kind of brat do you think I am, senpai?”  
  
“No matter how much time passes, you’ll always have the heart of a middle shooler or high schooler. Your genius and heart are not being kept at balance." 

“You don’t get it, you still don’t understand me.”  
  
“Why I ever wanted to understand you in the past is beyond me now.”

Enoshima Junko reached out past the umbrella into the rain, holding her red claws out as if she was trying to catch those raindrops even though she knew they were digital. Her body itself was digital as well as in the real world that hand was missing from her body. In the real world too, something essential was missing, an entirely unique existence that she of all people had taken an interest in. A heartless doll just like her, but unlike her that person was always laughing, always smiling, always having fun.  
  
A liar by nature, the only thing she had ever been true to was her own desires. That boy was the opposite of her, a liar too but the only thing he had ever been true to was his own emotions, they were ugly, repugnant, and only caused others suffering. An entirely heavy existence, everybody who came into contact with him got dragged down. Being with him was like continually drowning in unfamiliar emotions, not even being slowly pulled under the surface by heavy chains but rather having her head pushed down all at once, while she kicked at the water, clawed, and resisted. However to her, that movement that caused ripples in the water was much more beautiful than still glass like water.  
  
Just because they were similar did not mean they instantly clicked like two oddly shaped puzzle pieces meant only for each other. If it had been like that, Junko would have hated it for sure. Rather, they both saw missing parts of themselves in each other, and they both tried to take it away. Her hands reached into his chest, and sunk into his skin like she was melting, and his arms wrapped around her and failed to let go.When they hurt each other it was not like they licked each other’s wounds either, they were just as likely to throw salt into the wounds and laugh as they were to try to comfort the other.

Yet after all of that, after all the times they were wounded and had wounded each other, just to taste one another’s warmth suddenly Enoshima was cut off from it. Kumagawa Misogi’s bad habit, he had a tendency to disappear suddenly and this time he went away to some far off place without her.

 _Why go be miserable alone when we could be miserable together?_ She did not understand him, in a way that she could ponder him again and again. She thought, watching the rain fall. Falling things were just not as beautiful when she was watching from afar alone. It seemed lonely, impersonal, falling together, deeper and ever deeper together would be much more fun.

“It’s his fault you know, he told me to live over and over again and just when I had finally started to think about it he disappeared. He needs to take responsibility…” Enoshima Junko was closing her hand so hard, that her rail nails dug into her skin and left thin red trails of blood. “Because I did everything I could to make this world interesting, ending the world, killing my class, and even tried to kill myself but none of it was all that interesting in the end. The only time… the world changed just a little bit was when I was around him… it has to be him, the times I spent with him, they’re something real, when everything else in the world is nothing.”  
  
“You’re searching for something real in a virtual world then.”

“I’m just searching for something interesting, as I’ve always done. Even if I have to destroy the world to get it.”  
  
“What if he’s happier here? Without you? Did you hear the backstory Nagito came up for him in this world, the girl he loved threw herself off the roof.”  
  
“That’s obviously me. He’s making himself absolutely miserable without me.”  
  
“It’s Anshin’in-san.” Izuru coldly cut her off without any hesitation at all. “Not you. The parallel would be to her. For Kumagawa-senpai it’s always going to be about Anshin’in-san, because she’s his root. She was the first person to find him, the first person to connect with him. You were found by Kumagawa Misogi, but he was found by Anhin’in-san first.”  
  
“Oh, now you’re just being petty. No wonder you get referred to as a god, Mr. High and Mighty pants.”  
  
“Pants…” Izuru repeated quietly.  
  
“I noticed you targeted Hitoyoshi-kun first of all people. After all this time you’re still jealous of him, aren’t you?”  
  
“Jealous…”  
  
“What if he’s happier here without you?” Enoshima Junko stuck her tongue out and twisted her face up as she mocked his serious voice without any inflection. “That same logic applies to you as well. Komaeda-senpai could have imagined any scenario but he imagined a world where you never even existed. Do you know why, it’s because HItoyoshi-kun Medaka’s you.”  
  
“He Medakas me…?”  
  
“His existence renders your own pointless because he’s just inherently better. When he subjected himself to human experimentation, he only asked for an ability that neutralizes luck. He tries to understand others without getting angry or lashing out. He’s a normal guy who doesn’t feel inferior at all times. He entered the flask plan for the sake of the girl he loved, but he saved her instead of stabbing her with spears. It’s like Hitoyoshi-kun and Medaka-chan’s existence is to rub it in our faces how terrible and petty we are.”  
  
“I really dislike when you refer to us as the same.”  
  
“Oh, you can feel dislike now too? Awe you’re growing into a big boy already, somebody’s been drinking his milk.” She teased, before her eyes sharpened on him once again. “The only reason Hitoyoshi-kun and Komaeda-senpai aren’t an item is because he happened to meet Medaka-chan and become obsessed with her. You only won out by pure chance. If he was with Hitoyoshi-kun he’d be much more happier, and yet you chose to kill Hitoyoshi-kun first.”

“That’s enough. You and I didn’t come down here to rescue our boyfriends, we came to destroy the world.” Izuru changed the subject, finally turning away and bringing the umbrella with him as a way to get Enoshima to follow him. When she did, he sighed and said a familiar phrase. “Besides, we can psychoanalze each other all day and we’ll make no progress at all… this is pointless.”  
  
“Awe, but it’s so fun though…” Junko kicked her legs with an extra splash in the rain to catch up with him, holding her hands against her chest still as she did so. Kumagawa had once said these words to her. _To me the world is like a dark night that swallows everything. But since you came into my life… and you were so kind to find me._ She had thought that statement incredibly backwards when he said it though. To her the world was like a pitch black night, where it did not matter if everything was swallowed or not. She had never seen any light in this world in the first place. There was nothing to lose because there was nothing to begin with, no emotions, no light, no hope, an entirely stagnant world. Suddenly, a single star had fallen from the sky. She had picked it up from the ground and held it in her hands, and saw how brilliant that light was, and held it close to her even though it burned her hands. Slowly, she realized it was not the world, but rather herself who had nothing. She could just not see anything around her. When she was given a little bit of illumination, she started to see things she had never seen before, and slowly the ice around her heart started to melt. The ice that was keeping her frozen in place, that threatened to devour her and make her unmoving forever, it was melted by his warmth. Then, as quickly as the star had come and fallen from the sky, its like had flickered out, and the only person she had to blame was herself for holding it too close to herself, for smothering it. “Pointless things can be fun too, that’s what Misogi was always saying…”  
  
Just to get a little bit of that warmth back, just to see that light, she would not mind burning the whole world. Truly that was the romanticist inside of her speaking.

“So in the end this is still just a game to you.” Without even looking back, Izuru gave his harsh assessment.  
  
Enoshima Junko smiled, beaming at the back of his head. “No, it’s rehabilitation. Despair rehabilitation.” Kamukura merely snorted because she was back to saying weird things again, but she refused to explain whatever she meant by that. The last words were meant to be heard only by her, she muttered them quietly. “For both Misogi and myself.”  
  
Because happiness was just something that people clung to, a reason to stay sleeping, young and beautiful forever like Endymion under the moon. However, it was despair that made them move, it was despair that made them change and grow up.Just as she had started to think about growing up with him, he had fallen asleep and tried to dream a happy dream.

 

😈

 

“Goddamnit. Komaeda what were you going to do if I didn’t chase those guys away?” Fuyuhiko said, standing his hands in the pocket of his suit as he sat back and forth.  
  
“Nothing. I don’t think they were going to kill me, I mean killing someone at a funeral is just bad manners. It’d take attention away from mourning Hitoyoshi-kun.” Komaeda said, looking back up at Fuyuhiko. His hair had become streaked with water and weighted down due to the rain, and he hoped that the rainwater washing over him might look like tears so at least Fuyuhiko would not think he was insensitive.  
  
“Idiot! They were throwing trash at you!”  
  
“Well, it’s only natural that one throws trash at a garbage can.”

Fuyuhiko made a noise through his gritted teeth, but rather than say anything in his anger he just quickened his pacing back and forth. “If people are pushing you around like that, cause a little bit of a fuss at least then I can find you and help you.”  
  
“I don’t want to make any noise. Besides, I don’t think the bullies were doing anything I disagee with. I think it would be better for everybody if I were to just become invisible. They’re trying to beat down my rough edges so I blend in with the crowd more, really they’re doing me a favor.” Komaeda said, as he finally stood up to observe the side profile of Fuyuhiko’s face, close enough to see his freckles as he could not grasp the anger he was feeling right now.  
  
“You realize if you’re invisible next time your dumb ass gets lost nobody’s ever going to find you.’  
  
“That’s fine…” Komaeda said, eyes vacant and empty. He wondered what was the purpose of him having eyes in the first place, even though he was always looking he never saw, and he was sure if there were sut two dark holes in his head they would convey the same amount of emotion to others. His face emaciated, with shallow cheeks and skin pulled tightly over it already felt more like a skull than anything else. “There was nothing for them to find in the first place.”  
  
“God how do I always end up discussing philosophy around you I fucking hate philosophy.”  
  
“That’s not true, Kuzuryuu-san for a gangster you are rather sensitive.”  
  
“No, listen to me. Natsumi said the boys reported back to her. Zenkichi didn’t just die in an accident, he was murdered.”  
  
No surprise showed across his face. Yet, he still said in a tone that mocked the shock a normal person might feel, “No way…I thought it was an accident.” He was certain, his bad luck had gotten to Zenkichi before him.

“Nope. They messed him up real bad too, made it look like he was crushed by falling beams.”  
  
_Falling… Crushed…_ for some reason those words resonated with him, but he did not want to think about it. Words of destruction resonated him because he was by nature a destructive existence that was probably all it was.  
  
“I’ve gotta go. You watch over things here till the end, okay?”  
  
At that, a bead of sweat ran down Komaeda’s face. That day just like any other day Zenkichi had walked away from him without returning, and now Fuyuhiko was showing him his back. He reached out suddenly without thinking and grabbed him by the arm, jerking it back. “Go where? We’re still in the middle of a funeral.”  
  
“Where the hell do you think? To catch the bastard who did this.”  
  
“You can’t- it’s too dagnerous. Let the police handle it.”  
  
“He was a brother to me.”  
  
Komaeda flinched at that word. Another word to display closeness. Perhaps because Fuyuhiko had a sister he could use that word so casually. An existence who was born to be close to him, who already so naturally shared so many things. Komaeda tried to think if there was anybody like that he shared so much with, but then Kumagawa came to mind and all he felt was repulsion. He shared too much with Kumagawa. That was why they could never be close. Staring at someone that was hiding behind a mirror. Perhaps, if he really wanted to reach the other side and be with Kumagawa, he could smash that mirror into piees, but all he would see shattered is his own reflection, his fragile existence made of glass breaking further and further. Even worse just by reaching out, those flying pieces of glass would dig themselves into his flesh and tear him up. “It’s dangerous…” He finally said, as the summary of all of those emotions.

Yet, even after his weak words Fuyuhiko still looked back at him. “So, you coming or not?”  
  
Komaeda’s face widened in shock. Before he lowered his eyes timidly, looking even lower than Fuyuhiko’s short self. “I wouldn’t be any help. I’d only get in your way.”  
  
“Well, that’s your choice…” Fuyuhiko said, “Even if you’d only make things worse I’d still want you to come.”  
  
“You say that but… nobody really thinks that way outside of ideals, you would just resent me in the end. In the past, Kumagawa-senpai was always getting involved in everybody’s business, he tried to help even when he had no idea to help, but all he did was hurt the people he cared about, and hurt himself at the same time. Then he just got too tired to keep enduring it and withdrew from everybody.”  
  
“So, that’s why you’ve acted so timid lately. You’ve lost the star that you once were inspired by.”  
  
Komaeda felt himself shudder in rejection of the notion of admiring any part of Kumagawa. A star, only temporary inspiration, a fleeting light. If he were to chase light, he would chase a light that consumed everything and burned everything away, much more powerful than that. However, he had given up on light and simply wanted to be invisible and one with the shadows.  
  
“Hey, dumbass. Why are you wasting time with a dead end trash fire?” The girl with Fuyuhiko’s baby face but long blonde hair stood proudly as she walked away from the crowd.  
  
“Natsumi calm down. Komaeda’s more like us than he’s like other people.” Fuyuhiko said, looking back at his sister.  
  
Her temper cooled somewhat, and her mouth pulled into a catlike smirk. “I see, I see, so rather than burnable trash he’s yakuza trash.”  
  
“There are so many different types of trash, the world is a wonderful and varied place…”  Komaeda commented quietly, like he was an outsider to this conversation.  
  
“Natsumi you don’t have to get involved in my grudge you know.” Fuyuhiko said, looking back at her.  
  
“I’m calling the shots now instead of mom and dad. I don’t give a shit about who is the real heir or whose more worthy or whatever, I ain’t ever leaving you behind big bro. Your beefs are my beefs.”  
  
“Tch… How clingy.” or so Fuyuhiko said, but observing his face Komaeda could see he was smiling. He did not exactly understand the reasons that people smiled, but knowing that he had an annoying little sister who would never leave him alone, who would always continue to annoy him, Komaeda would have been happy if he had such a person.  
  
Natsumi acted rough around the edges and far more belligerent than her older brother, but that was only because she had taken on the burden of talent, of being a talented yakuza heir in his place to allow her brother to have a normal life. Once again, Komaeda thought _if only there were no such thing as talent, those two would be allowed to be normal siblings._ For some reason Komaeda thought that Fuyuhiko might have been too prideful to allow himself to be protected by his younger sister… but if that were the case in the past _it’s a good thing he let go of that pride. That kind of pride is worthless._ Fuyuhiko unlike him could live an existence close to others, so there was no reason for him to push others away.  
  
Just as the two siblings were about to leave, somebody cleared their throat. “You two got secret information. You’re not going to be so kind as sharing it with your underclassmen, senpai.” She stood holding a bare hand under her chin. Kirigiri Kyoko her other hand dragged through her long lilac hair, before flipping it behind her shoulder.  
  
Komaeda had no idea why the first thing he noticed about her was that she was not wearing gloves, or that her hands were entirely smooth and unburned. Most normal people had unscarred hands, they could reach out and touch whatever they wanted without feeling pain.  
  
“Now, now little lady. The daughter of the school’s principal doesn’t have any place where I”m going. Why don’t you go back to being a good girl, girls like you whose noses are too good are nothing but trouble to us.” Fuyuhiko said, stuffing his hands back in his pockets and turning away.  
  
“If it affects this school it’s my business. Besides it’s like you said people with good noses like mine attract trouble, so if I want to investigate I need poeple who are used to trouble.”  
  
“So basically instead of us recruiting you, it’s more like you recruiting us?”  
  
“Exactly. You catch on faster than I thought. I’m looking forward to our cooperation.” Kyoko had such a force of personality she was easily able to push her way onto the team.  
  
“Well, Komaeda’s pretty good at playing detective too so when he agrees to help us, you’re out.” Fuyuhiko said, grubling and going along with it. He was far too cooperative for his own good.  
  
“Playing teen detective? What is this nancy drew? Edogawa Ranpo? Detective Conan? Majin Tantei nougami neuro? I have no interest in that sort of thing, teenagers playing at detective only happens in fiction.”  
  
“For someone who has no interest in being a detective you sure know a lot of detective media… Kirigiri-san…” Komaeda commented quietly from the side of the conversation.  
  
“Kirigiri, don’t call me that. That last name has nothing to do with me.” As she spoke up she walked past Fuyuhiko as if to say ‘let’s go already’.  
  
“Fine whatever, if you want to tag along, be my damn guest…”  
  
Fuyuhiko watching her, saw a glimer of light from the outside reflect off of her hair, making her pale lilac hair appear silver for a moment. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open, lips unable to form words to describe the emotions that suddenly gripped him.  
  
His sister at his side elbowed him. “Oi, what’s wrong big bro? Do you have a thing for girls with silver hair?”  
  
“Shut the hell up.”  
  
“That’s not a nice way to talk to your sister,” Kirigiri said still walking ahead proudly having no fear turning her back to Yakuza members. “Besides, you should be careful around me because I have a thing for men shorter than me.”  
  
“You shut up too!” Fuyuhiko snapped at her.  
  
Komaeda reached out after the noisy people that were leaving him, but he could not fully commit to the action, his fingers curled back in on his hand and his arm fell uselessly at his side. He let the rain wash over him again, hoping that whatever colors that filled in his character would wash away in that rain, and he could become a truly colorless existence.  
  
Fuyuhiko looked back to him once, and Komaeda’s heart suddenly froze. For some reason he had an expectation… or maybe a small hope that after all of that Fuyuhiko would still drag him along. However the boy turned back and shoved something in his arms. “Shit, if I’m investigating then I need you to do this for me. I promised I’d deliver Nanami’s golden week homework.”  
  
“Ah… Okay…”

  
It felt like he the unimportant minor character with no control over himself had been given a sidequest, an excuse for him to move from point a to point b. If it were not for his pre programmed path he was sure he would have just stood there in the rain until the rain stopped or he did.

 

😈

 

 _Why did it turn out like this?_ _  
_ _There are those with talent great enough to shape the foundation of society._ _  
_ _I’m not one of them._ _  
_ _I’m just another face in the crowd._ _  
_ _Which isn’t to say I envy them, though._ _  
_ _No, it’s much easier being a nobody._ _  
_ _The star of the show is a restrictive demanding role._ _  
_ _Were there no talent, everyone would be able to live modest lives, find a modest amount of happiness…_

Nanami Chiaki liked games. She was absolutely terrible at them, and no matter how much of her days she spent playing them she never got any better. If she wanted to clear the story mode of a game she never looked up cheats online or asked someone to help her get through the persistent parts, she just played and played until she managed to find a way to get through.

She had a simple minded approach to things. If you keep moving forward, then eventually you’ll reach the ending you want. Even though at the end of the day their beliefs might have amounted to the exact same thing, Komaeda ended up envying that simplicity.  
  
A famous composer had once been told his music had too many notes. Komaeda thought it was arrogant to compare himself to that person, but when it came to expressing himself he thought it was an apt metaphor. Any music he ever made would be too complicated, too much going on for others to listen it would be grating on their ears. However, Nanami’s music was simple, catchy, eight bit chip tune that everybody loved. Even though they were trying to sing the same song, the only one who would ever make pleasant music was Nanami not him.  
  
They were classmates last year, and still classmates this year though technically Chiaki only barely ever came to school. She liked to skip out and play video games all day instead. Not that she disliked school, just she did whatever was most enjoyable to her at the moment.

When their class was first getting along, Chiaki made friends with everybody. She would appear in front of them and say _I believe in you_ when they most needed to hear it. That was the secret of Nanami Chiaki’s hopes. Hope was simply a belief, believing in others, you could believe in others as much as you want so why not freely give it away. She was someone who easily got along well with others, and yet she was oddly reclusive.  
  
Komaeda had introduced himself to her parents and been told that Chiaki was in the middle of her gaming marathon and would not come out of her room. He took his shoes off in the entryway and climbed the steps to her room, and gently knocked before cracking the door open. “Umm… Nanami-san, I brought your homework. I can just leave it on your desk if you want.”  
  
“No, come in Komaeda. This game is better with two players, I’ve been dying all morning trying to solo it.” Chiaki said, not even looking at him she had recognized his voice.  
  
Komaeda really did not want to, but he did not have it in him to deny others. It was different when he told Fuyuhiko he would not try to avenge Zenkichi, because then he was denying himself, his own urge to want to do something to help Zenkichi even in his death. He picked up the controller of an older console and held it in his hands. He knew exactly what to do, but he pretended to hold it wrong, passively hoping Nanami would notice it, and notice how useless he was as a gaming partner. “You have ten lives left, Nanami-san, you’re not doing so bad.”  
  
“I started out with a thousand.”  
  
“A thousand? You’re not very good at this, huh?”  
  
“Talent has nothing to do with video games. Video games are enoyable whether you win or lose, that’s why I like them so much.”  
  
“But you always seem to lose.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter if you’re having fun.”

She did not even look at him, just looked back at the TV manipulating her pixel avatar to move across the screen with clumsy button presses. In Komaeda’s opinion this game did not deserve to be called a classic, all the difficulty was artificial and cheap. A proper game built up difficulty with challenges that were meant to raise up the strength of the player over time… oh, but he would never say that out loud it was not like he liked games or anything. He was not being tsundere towards gamers, he just… those were the comments of an observer and nothing else.  
  
Chiaki spoke up again. “Komaeda you’re not having fun.”  
  
“Oh, sorry. I had a feeling my presence would ruin this…”  
  
“No, I meant you’re not even trying to have fun. It’s like you’re right next to me, but you’re trying as hard as you can to suppress yourself so you’re not even here.”  
  
Nanami who always had her head in the digital clouds, could read people well as long as she was assessing them as some part of game. Outwardly, people were just collections of experiences, with different capabilities, that was no different than statistics and pre programmed responses depending on the input they were given.  
  
“Well, Nanami-san I didn’t plan on coming here in the first place. It’s not like I wanted to be here, it’s just Kuzuryuu-kun asked me too so…”  
  
“That’s what I mean. You pretend you’re not interested in others lives, but you always end up showing up in a passive way. If you were to go where you wanted to go, where would you be?”  
  
“...” Komaeda did not answer. He instead purposefully jumped off a cliff on the platformer as a metaphor of what he wanted to do to escape from this conversation.  
  
“You always say you’re not getting involved, then you wait for somebody else to give you an excuse to get involved so you can blame it on them. Basically you’re just trying to have it both ways.”  
  
“Both ways…?”  
  
“Like you want everything your way, yeah. That kind of childish thing.”  
  
“Everything…” He repeated again. “Sorry, I died. I told you I’m no good at this at all.”  
  
“It’s fine Komaeda. Talent doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make a difference whether you have talent or not.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I mean, that isn’t the end goal.”  
  
“But…I’m not being helpful. There’s nothing I can do really.”  
  
“Komaeda, you have greater freedom than anybody else does right now so why aren’t you using it? You could go anywhere, and become anything, so why do you choose to remain yourself?”  
  
“That’s a little bit mean…” Komaeda scratched at the back of his white hair, that had fluffed up again once the rain had dried off of it making him look like quite the lost sheep.  
  
“Oh, sorry about that. I didn’t realize I was being insensitive.” Chiaki raised her controller above her head, laying back suddenly and looking up. “I really love games but, I wonder if I was good at them, if people praised me for it, would I still love them as much? It’d probaby feel like that was all people saw of me.”

 _I agree…_ _  
_ _I agree but…_  
Perhaps he just did not want to have anything in common with such a positive existence as Nanami. He did not want her to believe in him, or any part of himself.  
  
What was that word, that simple word again… Hope? He wanted to forget about it. Even if it was a part of himself he wanted to tear it away from him. He wanted to live without that fundamental part, he wanted to live with a missing piece.   
  
Komaeda finally hit the pause button. “You should do your homework, Nanami-san. Otherwise Kuzuryuu-kun will worry about you. Games are meaningful because it has both hard and easy parts, life is meaningful because there are both pleasant and unpleasant encounters.”  
  
“I see. Then I can still be glad I met you of all people, Komaeda.”

 _Did she just call me an unpleasant encounter?_ Komaeda said, his smile twitching as he watched Nanami reluctantly put down the controller.

 

😈

 

On the way to the place he was wandering to, the place all lost things ended up just by bad luck he just so happened to come across Hansode.  
  
She was sitting in the rain. Her tiny form looked somehow even smaller. Even though he had made every excuse to leave Nanami’s house as quickly as possible, and Nanami did not seem to have fun while he was around that girl had still insisted that he borrow an umbrella of hers for the walk home. He wanted to tell her no, that he enjoyed being in the rain because it made his skin even paler, and lighter blue and he might become transluscent if he kept trying but that was all too bothersome to explain.  
  
Komaeda knew that if he got involved it would probably only make Hansode’s mood worse. The kindest thing he could do was turn a blind eye to her and keep walking. Yet, quietly he approached her from behind and held an umbrella over her head.  
  
She noticed the rain was no longer falling on her head. Hansode glanced up at him for a moment, and then slapped the umbrella away, causing it to fall on the ground, and then get blown away by the storm’s wind.  
  
Komaeda knew if Chiaki lent him an umbrella it would get lost somehow. “I’m sorry, that presumptuous of me thinking I could comfort anyone.”  
  
“I don’t really care, Komaeda.”  
  
“Of course, you just lost your best friend. I don’t expect you to care about me, but um… care about yourself a little bit, you’ll catch a cold if you stay out in the rain.”  
  
“Good, then I can join Zenkihci whever he is.”  
  
“Umm... Hansode if someone like me were to say that, that would be true but you have plenty of reasons to live besides, Hitoyoshi-kun. Your brother is right there, isn’t he?“

Hanten was standing right behind her, his back to both of them and his arm crossed. There was no symbol on his back though Komaeda was confused as to why he was expecting one.

“Hansode, I’m sure that even Hitoyoshi-kun would want for you to live.”  
  
“Komaeda-senpai, living for others is harder than it looks you know.”  
  
“I know?” He tilted his head, off center. “Why do I know?”  
  
“You know because, you lose sight of yourself.”  
  
“If only I could do that…” Komaeda said, closing his eyes. The rain kept falling. Yet, it would not drown out all the other sounds like he wanted it to and he was still a part of this conversation. “Well living for others is probably a mistake, because there’s no reason at all for living, no reason at all that people are alive, it’s comforting being a nobody.”  
  
“You sound like Kumagawa-senpai.” Shiranui said, before finally turning around and leaving him there. When Komaeda opened his eyes again, he felt a little bit awkward but decided it was probably his fault for saying something wrong.

Komaeda wondered if Shiranui had known exactly where he was going, before he himself knew it.

『Yo, human failure.』Kumagawa greeted him when he came in the room.  
  
“Yo, damaged goods.” Komaeda reflected back the perfect greeting. He could tell from the hasty way that Kumagawa had sat up, that he had been doing nothing more than napping with a manga volume on his face before he came in the room.  
  
As they talked, Kumagawa spun a small screw manipulating it between each of his fingers. As usual Kumagawa just started talking without any prompting on Komaeda’s part. It was like the boy knew what he was thinking before he himself knew it, and Komaeda once thought that might be a comforting thing but when he heard his own thoughts coming out of the mouth of someone else usually all he learned was how terrible of a person he was. 『I think it was Britney Spears that said there are only two types of people in the world, the ones that entertain or the ones that observe. Hey who do you think the true parasites are, the people who attract admirers wouldn’t be special without the people who admire them, but the people who admire others are trying to become a part of their specialness.』  
  
“Parasites? I think the only bloodsucker around here is you, Senpai.”

『Meeeeean. I’m not a vampire you know.』  
  
“Maybe I’d believe that if you went outside more.”

『There’s nothing for me to do but sleep and have happy dreams.』  
  
“I doubt your dreams are that happy considering how gloomy of a guy you are.”

『You’re right, reality is just as bad as my nightmares so it doesn't really matter if I’m asleep or awake.』  
  
“In the end whatever contribution I’m going to make is pointless but… is it really okay for me to do nothing?”

『Nagito-chan why did you decide to be a nobody in the first place?』  
  
“You see, if I were to disappear, vanish, that would be my punishment.  

『Punishment?』  
  
“Yeah, punishment. I know you can’t read senpai but your ears work just fine. Up until now, I would flashily proclaim that I loved other people, but I don’t think I was serious about it.Even though I claimed myself to be someone loving them from a fixed distance, I always got in the middle of things, and kept meddling, I tried to gain what I wanted from them… yeah, it was just about me all along. In terms of love, that was impure. That’s right, it was impure.”

『So you’re trying to live alone now?』  
  
“Yeah, because that’s what I always said I did but I didn’t really mean it. So my punishment now is to take responsibility and keep a safe distance from others.”  Komaeda’s fingers curled around the desk he had sat down to be next to Kumaawa. He did not want to look the other in the eye. He did not want to stare into the pool of water, just talk and hear his own voice echoing back at him. “But… even though I kept my distance bad things still happened. Maybe if I acted it would be different…”

『Whether you act or not it won’t make a difference. There’s no escape from the cycle of failure. You won’t die even if you’re killed.』Komaeda got the sense that Kumagawa was no longer talking about him, yet he was talking about him too. 『Dust to dust… well, whatever. When all is said and done, your crimes and your punishments are yours and yours alone. I’m not sure how you see it, but I’ll tell you that I don’t think you’re in the wrong. If you can be faulted for anything, it’s that you are who you are. You’re guilty of the crime of being you, and so, too, that shall be your punishment. And I have no intention of getting in the way of that.』  
  
Because Kumagawa would not comfort him, that was why he liked being so honest around him.  
  
He was sure there was a person once who would try to understand him.  
He was sure that person tried to embrace all of him.  
If he tried to kill a person, that person would listen to his reasons and forgive him.  
To him, that was just a little too heavy.  
It would crush him.  
It wasn’t that he couldn’t feel affection towards others, but that he couldn’t receive it.  
At some point he might have desired to be understood, but he realized he wasn’t as deep of a person as he once thought himself. It was just his sins that had run deep enough that it was impossible to see to the bottom. The depths of him were invisible, there was nothing there, pure white, the absence of all color, transparent.

So, Kumagawa who could only connect to others through pain was oddly comforting. Hitiyoshi Zenkichi was dead, but people like him and Kumagawa were still living. He wondered why? It was probably because Hitoyoshi Zenkichi had been alive to begin with.  
  
He had called what he was enduring right now a punishment for how he acted in the past. 

What was an execution? What was the ultimate punishment?  
Stabbing someone with a lot of spears.  
Yeah, obviously that’s one.  
Stabbing someone with a knife and then stomping their body until it was bloody pulp.  
That’s a good method. Pretty final, too.  
But the fatal wound that had afflicted both of them was not like any of those trivial sort of executions. Being hit with baseballs until one died, running in a motorcycle until one died, burning alive, drinking poison to kill oneself, those were trivial punishments. If a bear were to mockingly say it’s punishment time it was all wrong.  
“Punishment”, never happened all at once. It was the accumulation of consecutive blows, over and over again, that wore you away until you were no longer human - even though you are. You're no long able to lead a life even though you're living. You're exhausted trying to maintain the paradox of your existence, created by yourself, by your own reasoning. That's a punishment. In other words living through failure after failure, until it became your only way of living, a living failure. 

Unable to die when most people would.  
You just suffer. You simply suffer in agony. And you go on, forever, wherever.  
There's nothing to add meaning to that suffering, no light to reach out for no, no hope to justify it.   
Meaninglessly, you just go on.  
Life isn’t a video game, not because there’s no reset button, but because there’s no Game Over. Even though it was “over” long ago, tomorrow shows up anyway. Even when night falls, morning comes after it. When winter ends, spring rolls in.

The world continues to turn, you have an infinite amount of lives. You redo your life again and again. But it’s like loading up a million crappy characters, and each time you make another one, your “self” gets a little bit shoddier. You're really terrible at building characters so the stats are all wrong and everything you tried just made it worse. 

Only virtual worlds could be torn apart. Only video games could be turned off. Only imaginary worlds got destroyed. 

And eventually you get to thinking…  
Am I really me, or… did I become something else long ago?  
Being around Kumagawa, staring into the mirror waiting for it to shatter into pieces and for his own image to shatter into a million tiny pieces it was like that.  
  
That was the feeling he got right now. He had come to understand that about Kumagawa, which really meant he had just learned another terrible thing about himself. “Senpai, what about you? I thought you kept living so you could win one day? Did you give up on winning?”

『Nobody really believed I would ever win to begin with. Wanting to win, and being able to win aren’t the same. I just got used to the taste of failure. It’s my special flavor. 』

Komaeda laughed at this, like two friends making a joke between each other. But, he was no friend of Kumagawa’s and Kumagawa no friend of his. They may as well have been talking to themselves. It was all meaningless, worthless small talk, neither enjoyable or unenjoyable. It was an act of self reflection on how he had lived these past ninteen years, and a reflection of light. To Kumagawa a reflection of shadow of how he had lived the past twenty. However, he still wanted to ask him even if it was meaningless, he plucked one of the mirror shards that had become embedded deep within his skin, a small fragment and looked at the tiny portion of him that reflected back head on. “Hey, Senpai. Is there someone you love?” 

『Yeah, I’ve got someone. Incidentally, I also have someone I hate the most, and maybe it’s myself, or maybe it’s them. Why do you ask? Did you figure out who it was you loved?』  
  
“I don’t know. Even if I did I don’t think I’d ever admit it out loud even to you.”

『Well I guess that’s the difference between you and me.  You’re such a liar, and I’m always very truthful don’t you think?』  
  
“Yeah, guess so.”

『I guess you’d better keep on living, then. Don’t become someone like me. 』  
  
“Same to you.”

Living for the sake of others, but he had only ended up talking about himself again when he had meant to ask his senpai about it. Oh well, no matter what he could not stop being himself he could only become invisible.  
  
If he became more like Kumagawa, then Kumagawa would become more like him, it felt important that the two of them stay distinct no matter what, like the boundary line between worlds was drawn between them.  
  
Stay on opposite sides of the mirror.  
Stay on opposite sides of the water, don’t let it ripple.  
If two human disasters like them, human failure and damaged goods got along the accumulated misfortune might actually end the world.  
Even if the world did not end it would change in a way they did not recognize and never be able to  go back to its former state.  
Getting too close to others was a way of disappearing too, soon you lost track of which parts were them and which parts were you. But that wasn’t what he wanted. Two words would crumble away, but there was something depressing about that.  
Pathetic.  
Needy.  
If he learned to accept or love some part of himself too, just like being loved by someone else, that would be too heavy.  
A world would crumble away. Even if it was just an imaginary one, even if it was a meaningless loss, it would still be destroyed. Komaeda was far too delicate for that kind of destruction.   
  
Alone, the thoughts that were much clearer around Kumagawa became incoherent once more. All that was echoing inside of his head was the white noise, unreadable, that came from broadcasting and receiving signals with a faulty antennae.  
  
The moment Komaeda left the room, Kumagawa flopped over and let the manga volume fall on his head once more. He glanced at the girl with half lidded eyes, finding it impossible to fall asleep once more, because there was little difference between sleeping and waking to him anymore.

『 _So then, what happened to him. You know, the boy living in a world that was nothing special_ 』  
  
In the corner of the room, the faceless girl raised her head. _“Oh you mean, Rei.”_

Outside, Komaeda saw Shiranui exactly where he had left her on his way back home. Except this time her brother had disappeared, and there were two figures approaching her. One of them had blonde hair.  
  
Everything he said about not getting involved disappeared in an instant. He forgot about himself. He started to run forward. He did not want to think of anything anymore, or consider what to do anymore, he wanted to forget everything and simply act. To react without having to decide. 

Because he hated deciding, and choosing. He did not even want to choose between one metaphor. He wanted to remain jumbled up. He did not want to be interested in others, or himself. He did not want conflict with people, nor to laugh with them. He only wanted to laugh at himself. He smile when he was supposed to get angry, and got angry when he was supposed to smile. He could not attain anything, because when things around him broke whether he reached out or not. He thought over and over again some part of himself must wish for those things to destroy, must want to destroy them because he cannot have them.  

Paradoxes were just so tiresome to maintain. He wanted everything. He wanted nothing. He was simply tired of wanting.  
  
He was a shallow clown. He was a tragic figure. He was smarter than the talented kids. He was trash who could not possibly compare to them. He played the fool to make them shine brighter. He pretended he was better than them. It was all just an act, a different mask he wore depending on the moment. The worst act of all -  
  
He pretended to be a human being. He did not pretend to be anybody else, even though it would be better if he was anybody besides himself.  
  
That was why he ran forward. However, he could not escape from himself. He was lonely. All he had was himself. He would always embrace himself, and always catch up to himself because he was lonely. He could not disappear no matter how fast he ran or how far away he was. He ran forward to try to save Hansode, or perhaps he wanted to save himself in that moment and believe he was something other than a nobody who did nothing.  
_  
_ He ran with everything he had. He got close to the two terrorists and was about to shut from behind, he had no plan whatsoever but that did not matter because immediately he slipped on a glass bottle fell forward, and hit his head hard against the pavement. That was right, he had hit his head hard, smashed it hard enough to crack it, and shake his brain around. He had been falling this entire time, and the narration fell with him, and it became meaningless just like him. 

Speaking of which he heard once that when life forms take fatal damage - for example if that fall had just crushed half of his brain, or if he was ripped in half, their nervous system gets cut off. That made him feel very pleased, the reason he was feeling nothing at all, was because he had cut off half of himself. He had left half of himself behind somewhere.The body decided it was useless to send signals warning of impending doom.  
  
He wondered where that half was? Kumagwa? The boy he loved whose face he had forgotten? His brain decided to stop sending signals, because they would have all been nonsense anyway. Ehehe. Stop laughing for no reason like that. Disturbing. I hate that about you. A truly pitiful brat, he thought of himself. Believing he was right, believing someone like him could have philosophy, that the words he said had meaning, speaking as if he had enlightenment, telling himself he had found the will to keep living when really he was just afraid of dying. Afraid beyond being afraid of having a hollow self crumble to bits, and hollow world crumble around him. And what remained after that crumbling was nothing… A tragedy, a farce that did not elicit laughs nor tears, and the farce that had not yet come to an end. It continues forever. Frozen, frozen. The rain was so cold. He could not move, falling once and hitting his head had finished him, all he could do was sit in the rain and lose feeling.   
  
The world was frozen over yet it still continued to spin. Why was he feeling so many unpleasant things about himself? He thought he was happy? Oh, that was right Hitoyoshi Zenkichi had died. He repeated the fact again, the fact that he had been ignoring, that he had been refusing to feel all day, and then finally his consciousness went black. The feelings were just too heavy to feel, the fragile thing he called ego collapsed under it's own weight.   
  
The hero tried to save the day and then immediately slipped on a bottle and passed out. That was why a main character who had nothing going for him but luck was no good.

The terrorist did not attack Hansode, nor did he brutally murder her. He told his partner to step back and then sat on the curb next to her. As usual, he did nothing at all, and said nothing at all for the longest time.  
  
Hansode was the first to speak up. “Let me guess, you’re going to tell me that this world is fake.”  
  
“You already knew?”  
  
“I had a feeling. You ever think that this is too good to be true? A world where Medaka-chan doesn’t exist and I’m the original her, that was far too good of a dream for even me to believe.”  
  
“Then why…”  
  
“I stuck it out here for Zenkichi’s sake. I’m really good at playing pretend after all.”  
  
“I see…”  
  
Izuru did not reach out to her, but rather he waited for the girl to reach out to him. “Hey, we’re the same aren’t we? You’re a fake just like me?”  
  
“Yeah, my identity was rewritten over and over again and I lost sight of myself again and again but I have no choice but to live with that. I think even if you’re a fake you deserve to live though, wasn’t that what you told me a long time ago?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Fakes have to work extra hard, because they have to make the effort to be real.”  
  
“It’s not that. If I go back to the real world… something bad will happen, because I’m around, if I decide to be my real self I’ll hurt people.”  
  
“Uhm…” Izuru had not expected such a heavy backstory from the small cute girl of all people, he made an akward face that was more like the ones Hajime would make then the expressionless mask he usually wore. He tried to think of something, but it was like reaching into a pool of water and trying to grasp at it, the liquid would fall through your fingertips. He was trying to think what he would say, but there was nothing definite about him, the combination of two people melted together, two heads, he was of one mind one moment, and flowed to another the next. However, all he could express this with was an awkward stuttering of. “Umm… Because I became Kamukura (a fake), a lot of bad things happened. Even though it would probably be better if I never existed… it’s the decision I made, it’s the person I chose to be. Even if it was fake… even if Kamukura was never real or created in a lab it was still the result of my choices and I don’t want to be able to throw that away, even if all you do is put on a performance, that’s what you choose so it’s still a part of who you are… It’s not entirely fake.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I met a bunch of people, over and over again, wearing different faces each time. The current me, is just the summary of all those previous existences, it’s indistinct. I can’t say the person they met at the time was the real me, but… to me those experiences are still the real thing. I don’t regret them.”  
  
“Awe, so you don’t regret meeting me?” Junko cooed in the background, trying to ruin the moment like she ruined everything else.  
  
“You’re the exception.” Izuru responded coldly. “You can remain in this perfect world, where you’re a whole person, or you can go back to the imperfect world, Shiranui…that let you meet Zenkichi.”  
  
“I hate that world.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“I hated that school.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
“I hated the fact that I met Zenkichi.”  
  
“I uhm…” Izuru was starting to feel awkward again.  
  
“But that’s fine… Unlike hope and justice which must always prevail. Love doesn’t always have to win. I want to meet Medaka-chan and Zenkichi again at least to tell them how much I hate them. Maybe then they’ll stop chasing after me.” Shinraui said, before she put on another fake smile and looked up at Izuru. “You’re terrible at this Hinata-senpai. You might even be worse at it than Kumagawa-senpai and that’s saying something.”  
  
They were both fakes, he thought he could understood her but Shiranui Hansode refused to let herself be understood to the end. She disappeared right there, leaving a hollow corpse behind. Junko called out to Hanten.  
  
“Hey buddy, you going to have a personality again?”  
  
The man with his back turned to others, who was simply there shrugged and then disappeared as well.

The moment they were gone, Junko started to tap her heel in annoyance. She basically looked like someone who was begging wordlessly for someone to ask what was wrong, like one of those teenagers who stomped their feet and then slammed the door to their room extra loud. However Izuru only stared at her passively.  
  
“Oi, what’s that supposed to mean love doesn’t always have to win?”  
  
“Since when were you such a believer of the power of love?” Izuru asked, turning his red eyes on her.  
  
“Love devours everything so recklessly, it's all about the hunt you know,a game you can win, like a bear chasing a rabbit. Then, it wants to stop existing for a moment, and mistakes its existence for the rabbits so it eats all of it hoping the two of them will become one, hoping they'll both disappear at once. In the end though you were just trying to forget about the emptiness in yourself and you consumed them by accident. Why wouldn't I be a fan?"   
  
“I don’t think that’s the kind of love she was talking about.” He looked up to the middle school building that was across the corner. Crows gathered around it and cried out, almost the instant he thought of the person whose winning inside. “There’s some cases where love is a definite loss, that’s why they call it falling in love.”

Their banter would continue like that, endlessly.  
The perfect prototype, and the perfect goods.  
They were basically just talking to themselves, and trying to ignore the other was still there.  
  
Komaeda woke up on Tatami mat floors, it was nothing like the wet pavement he had slammed his head against. He looked up to see Fuyuhiko’s face taking up his entire view. _Oh, that’s so nice. I thought for some reason the moment you walked away from me you were going to disappear and die._

Then he remembered. _Oh, Hansode was being attacked by those terrorists and I failed to save her. Someone still did die. So then, this feeling, being sabotaged whether or not I decide to try? It’s exactly what Kumagawa felt once didn’t he?_

Fuyhuiko was staring at him impatiently, and finally flicked him on the forehead to make him focus. “Hey, the death count is two now, are you going to keep pretending like it has nothing to do with us? The only people who are dying are our friends.”  
  
“I… What do you think we should do, Kuzuryuu-kun?”  
  
“We need to initiate a risky survival strategy. No more playing it safe man, alright? Even if you're just bad luck, you're the risky part of the risky survival strategy!”

 _Playing it safe._ Komaeda wondered, he truly wondered, whether it was even possible for an existence like himself to play it safe. If he had ever once truly tried that. However, he was done trying to decide for himself and simply nodded along with what Fuyuhiko wanted this time.  
  
He did not even think about why he had been spared when the terrorists went out of their way to murder Hansode. Nobody would bother to look at garbage on the side of the road, or a dead dog with half of its guts torn out by the car that had just hit it to reveal its ugly insides. It was only natural to avert your eyes from such things.


	3. Then Devour me Courageously

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chiaki and Hinata's banter is a reference to some Araragi and Hachikuji banter in Nisemonogatari.

His insides and his outsides were completely different. At least on the outside he could pretend, he could put on a mask, wear skin, and play the part of someone who was alive. He put on a show and pretended to be someone larger than life. The clown makeup had been applied rather thick to make his pale and slowly rotting skin appear as something that could pass for living.  
  
If you were to wash away the makeup, peel off his skin, there would be no muscles, or sinewy tissues, no organs, as that had long since rotted away. Instead of a heart he would have a shriveled up petal that looked like a short lived cherry blossom. Yet if you tried to reach it, the cage of his ribs would get in the way, his bones were all that remained.  
  
In this world he was terribly exposed, walking around with no skin, a walking, laughing, dancing, skeleton. There was nothing to insulate him so he grew cold easily, a shivering skeleton. As he was forced to walk around naked and exposed he slowly started to realize how different his insides and outsides had been all along.  
  
It was like the fundamental construction of his being was a paradox, what would satisfy his outsides would never satisfy his insides, and vice versa. Soon, unable to distinguish whether his inside or his outside was the true him, he lost sight of who he was.  
  
That boy Komaeda Nagito, who laughed loudly through life, who quietly approached death. On that day around the start of his second year,  he should not have felt so cold but the world's heat rarely reached him.  He had nothing but his own flimsy body to give him shelter from the cold. Even though he was a smart and observant student who was like a jack of all trades rather than specializing in any specific subject, because he did not want to stand out he skipped class often and pretended school was unimportant to him.  
  
He had not come to this school because he was thinking of his future, the word future hardly existed to that boy. He always had one eye in the past, so the present was merely a dream to him that sometimes passed so unbearably fast that he could not grasp the properly flow of time, just like in a dream reality seemed to happen around him, slipping and sliding out of his control, he felt more like a witness to events happening rather than someone in the middle who was causing them to happen. He came to this school, because he wanted to observe his classmates. If he could not be in control of his own life, if he could not be in the center stage that was fine, he was sure he could be satisfied just watching their faces from the side. Even if he was just cast as a tree, holding branches in his hands.  
  
Perhaps he had come up with that specific metaphor because this morning he had skipped class to sit in the front plaza of the school, and watch as the cherry blossoms hung off the trees. There were those who said as the cherry blossoms blew off the trees easily in the beginning of spring and lightly danced through the air they were the most beautiful, and there were others that thought cherry blossoms were most beautiful not when in full bloom, but as they began to wither away and fall.   
  
Komaeda ran a hand through his hair as he watched the flowers. His hair too was withering, and the ends of his curls were touched pink just like a cherry blossom. He liked to observe things, the faces people would make in reaction to the beauty of the cherry blossoms, he thought they were better suited to appreciate their beauty than he was.  
  
Because he thought saying that something was most beautiful just before it wilted, was a little bit cruel. He could not enjoy it like most others could. When the people cleared out, he tried to enjoy the absence of noise, the beautiful place around him, he was trying to see beauty in the world even if he had to force it. The wind blew, one of the cherry blossoms that was barely clinging to a withered branch blew away.  
  
At that moment he realized while observing the withered branch, that it must have felt lonely, being broken like this, only able to decay slowly and keep on yearning for life. All it had left was the blossom clinging to it, but blossoms were ephemeral things and inevitably it had been blown away, uncontrollably by the wind. The wind came again, and Komaeda saw his hair, white with faded out red, blow in front of him and obscure the faded out world. Then suddenly, as he tried to brush his hair back again the wall he was sitting next to smashed.  
  
A boy flew through it surrounded by several more thugs. The same kind of kids that had been picking on him yesterday. No, he was not skipping school to avoid being bullied, he loved when other people gave someone unworthy like him attention even if it was negative attention, he just wanted to observe nature this morning.  
  
The boy was unlike him in every way, he was rough, he filled out his suit well, his hair was shaved and his cheeks were red and Komaeda could see they were glowing from the blood pulsing underneath his skin full of life. In a moment, the man he had kicked through the wall was down and when one tried to jump the much shorter boy from behind he quickly turned his body around and slammed his foot hard right into his jaw.  
  
“Is everything alright?” Komaeda said, not reacting to the violence of the situation at all. He was too distant from it, like someone in the seats watching a violent action movie their hearts might stir a little bit but they did not really feel the same way the protagonist did running away from the explosions. “Ahhhh, it’s fun to watch the hot blooded boys clash in this our youth.”

“Huh… What are you?” Fuyuhiko stopped grounding his foot into another boy’s chest in time to be weirded out.  
  
“It’s the fucking shinigami. He’s way scarier than a yakuza.” One of the faceless thugs on the ground muttered. Then another boy joined in. “Everybody who is friends with him gets cursed, why don’t you hang out with him so you can both die Yakuza Trash.”  
  
“If you’re just going to be crude to others then you don’t need those teeth, do you?” Fuyuhiko said as he lifted that man’s head, and then slammed it down on the ground. “If all that’s going to come out of your mouth is dirt then why don’t you just eat it and spit some more out.” He picked it up and slammed it down again, again, until Komaeda who was merely watching suddenly stood up.  
  
“You’re not like that, don’t become what they say you are…” He said as he tried to reach a hand towards Fuyuhiko, at the last moment though he flinched. He was not scared of Fuyuhiko but rather his own hand, he knew the boy would probably not want the feeling of metacarapls and phalanges a skeletal hand closing in around his shoulder.  
  
“You’re that kid that everybody says has bad luck right? The Shinigami?” Fuyuhiko had heard him and stopped, even though Komaeda was not able to get his voice above a whisper. Even though any words he said could have easily been blown away by the breeze. “Well, I’m just a street dog that’s going to die a dog’s death in the gutters. Most of the people in our class are good kids, I’d feel terrible dragging them into my life but you look like you’ve already seen it.”  
  
“A dog’s death… that’s unbelievably sad, Kuzuryuu-san.”  
  
“Oh, you knew my name but I didn’t know yours? Even though we’ve been in the class for one year now? How fucking rude can I get my sister would kick my ass.” Fuyuhiko reached out and grabbed the hand that Komaeda had left to uselessly dangle there. “I was trying to say… I think you and I are the same breed so, let’s be friends.”  
  
“I don’t think I have anything in common with anybody…”  
  
“Sure you do, you like sweets don’t you?”  
  
“I… the taste of sweet things never lasts on my lips but… yeah, I like it. I’m sure there are things you’re going to hate about me.”  
  
“Well I can tell you right away I hate how fucking tall you are. Come down to my level.” Fuyuhiko said, as he suddenly jabbed the other boy in the hip. It only took Fuyuhiko a moment to realize how skinny Komaeda was. “Oh, shit sorry. You really have been on the streets before have you… uh… listen, I’m a straightforward guy so if there’s something I hate I’ll just tell you, and if there’s something I like I’ll just tell you too!”  
  
That was something he had always wanted. There were things he just could not perceive for himself, social cues he could not pick up from others, sometimes he saw things that were not there and spent all day fretting about them, sometimes he said words he did not want to say and could not force himself to say words he did want to say. His insides and his outsides were fundamentally mismatched, and what he wanted was just a straightforward person by his side to help him express himself, yet he knew there was nobody he could burden with such a thing. He could live his life for others because his was a half life to begin with, but others were busy living full lives they did not want to walk by his side and continually help him.  
  
Yet, this boy came out of nowhere and casually took his hand. Komaeda knew he would have never been able to reach his hand out to others, but he could at least respond passively like this. He averted his eyes for a moment and muttered. “If you don’t mind it, I’d like to watch you from close range… I… can be like a shadow.” The word friend was too hard to say. Maybe one day he would be able to say it.

😈

 

The Kuzuryuu compound kept an ample supply of cherry trees planted in front of their main house. Komaeda after regaining consciousness, and being changed out of his wet school uniform had been sitting in some formal robes the Kuzuryuus had provided for him. They were white because of course they were. He watched the trees once more as the wind shook them, as a way of calming himself.  
  
When he fell and hit his head he had suddenly felt everything and nothing at once. He had recounted the experience to Fuyuhiko, and when the boy was concerned for him suddenly he laughed it off like it was nothing. Even after laughing though he was still shaking, like the laughter was echoing in his body. Fuyuhiko gave him a break as they were waiting for one more guest to arrive. So he sat on the front porch of the house, legs hanging off, sipping tea hoping the caffeine might clear his head slightly.  
  
Remembering that time he had first met Fuyuhiko, he smile slightly while he was sipping which turned out to be a mistake as the tea burned his lips and he had to spit it out. He did not know how much time passed before his head cleared, as suddenly he was sitting in between a meeting of three other people.  
  
_Oh, I must have zoned out again. Everybody’s here now time to pay attention._ “A detective and a yakuza coming together to solve a crime, it’s wonderful to see people from both sides of the conflict come together to investigate.” Komaeda said, pressing the tips of his bony fingers together.  
  
“I’m not a detective.” Kirigiri said immediately.  
  
Standing a few feet away from her investigating a katana, Fuyuhiko immediately said. “I’m not a yakuza either, the title passed to my little sis.”  
  
“I’m totes a yakuza!” Natsumi said happily as she observed her older brother sitting next to Kirigiri.  
  
“Oh right, Kyoko-san, Kuzuryuu-kun talent both passed you by and because of that you’re allowed to live normal lives, how comforting it is to be born failures.”

“The only failure of a human being in here is you, Komaeda-san.” Kirigiri immediately shot back, her lilac eyes focusing on him made him feel a sudden cold snap.  
  
“Oi, oi, you two don’t fight. I’m supposed to be the no good rebellious youth always getting into fights so why do you gotta be so catty Nagito?” Fuyuhiko said as he walked over and petted the other on the head for a moment before he went back to the task of inspecting his katana. “Anyway, we’re here to discuss the details of the case as we know it so far.”  
  
“Alright dumbasses listen up. The testimony of my boys corroborates with what Komaeda told us. The two criminals hiding out in our small town are always spotted together, one has blonde hair, female, large bust.”  
  
“Was that part so necessary to mention?” Komaeda asked, drily.  
  
“The other black hair spiky hair, red eyes, always seen in a black suit,” Kyoko continued, ignoring him.  
  
“Why didn’t you mention his chest size?” Komaeda interrupted again.  
  
“It’s now become a series of murders focused on those from our class roster. If they’re only specifically targeting my year, or if they’ll target your year next we have yet to deduce but… it’s likely that they’re targeting… isolated people. Do either of you upperclassmen know why that is?”

Komaeda lowered his head a little bit. “It’s my fault, if I hadn’t left Hansode-san to go speak with Kumagawa-senpai then this wouldn’t have…”  
  
“Your attempt to take responsibility has been noted, Komaeda-senpai but you don’t really seem genuine about it. After all, aren’t you the one who always blames others and bad luck for your circumstances…?”  
  
Fuyuhiko drew his katana partway out of the sheathe letting the metal reflect light into Kirigiri’s eyes. “I said quit fighting. Are you two children or something?”  
  
“Why yes, I am a child still. So please take care of me and raise me right, upperclassmen.” Kirigiri said, her voice not changing tone at all.  
  
Komaeda merely held his hands out innocently. “It’s fine, I don’t think anything Kirigiri-san said is wrong. I find her honesty to be a charming part of her character, so if those are her honest emotions towards me then I can accept them.” He did not want to resist her, just be like water changing to respond to the movements of others, only passively reacting unable to move on its own. “Kuzuryuu-san, I don’t really know about this because I wasn’t involved in the events of our classmates but… our class used to be a lot closer right?”

“Yeah, both the first year and the second year class got along really well last year. We all went to a big party hosted by Nanami once. I guess those situations where everybody is friends with everybody only happens in anime though, because it all broke down and this year most people keep to themselves. Shit no wonder we’re getting picked off we’re all walking home alone and avoiding each other.”  
  
“What events were these…?” Kyoko asked.  
  
As Fuyuhiko went to answer though he hesitated and looked down at the weapon in his hands. Suddenly, Natsumi spoke up for him. ‘Well basically there’s this girl named Sato and she tried to kill me, but my big bro saved me! I don’t know why he’s afraid to talk about it, it’s just another reason why I have the greatest big brother in the world.”  
  
“Natsumi quit it. I almost killed a girl, there’s nothing good or noble like violence. I know we’re Yakuza but the least we can do is not drag others who don’t deserve it down into the gutters with us.” Fuyuhiko’s fingers clutched the sword so tightly, Komaeda truly wondered if Fuyuhiko just like him was afraid to hold somebody’s hand.  
  
Yet, he could hold a weapon perfectly comfortable. It was too bad. His parents had taught him to hold weapons before they taught him to hold human hands. Komaeda looked at Kirigiri staring at her own bare hands and wondered if she was having the same thoughts as him at the moment. That was probably impossible because his thoughts were not that of a human being, just someone rejected from humanity but still… her hands looked rather cold without gloves protecting them.

“Shut up big bro. You weren’t wrong to do that. Even if you had killed her you would’ta been wrong. Anybody who tries to take my big bro away from me deserves to die that’s why…” Natsumi suddenly drew a knife and slammed it into the Tatami. “I ain’t forgiving these terrorists either. We’re always going to be together from now on.”  
  
Komaeda merely smiled. “The family bonds of others are so nice, I can see how close you are thank you for showing it to me.”

Natsumi glared at the other boy. “How do you even know about us? You’re just a lovesick hack who trails after him all the time like his shadow. It’s so weird how you’re always staring from afar.”  
  
“Ah well that’s just because I’m… a member of the crowd, and I’m no good so…”  
  
“Then why are you even here? If you get in my brother’s way, or put hi in dnager, and if you pull that shit you did with Hansode then I won’t ever forgive you-” 

“That’s alright because I’m not someone who can be forgiven in the first place.” Komaeda said, as his lips twitched, his smiling muscles felt overexerted this point from how much he was forcing them, there was probably a build up of lactic acid in his cheeks.  
  
“Sorry Nagito. Natsumi’s just worried, but she expresses it like a dumbass.” Fuyuhiko said, as eh stood up and then reached out to mess up his younger sister’s hair, which caused several shouty protests from her as she struggled against him.  
  
Finally, Natsumi reaching her limit simply crossed her arms and turned up her nose at him. “Hmmph, whatever, I’m going to get you guys some more tea. I hope you guys use the three braincells between the three of you to come up with a plan before I get back.” She said before slamming the door behind her.  
  
“Between Komaeda-senpai and Natsumi you keep such pleasant company, Kuzuryuu-san.” Kirigiri said, displaying her annoyance once again with no inflection in her voice.  
  
“I’m sorry about that, but the reason she’s like that is my fault.” Fuyuhiko finally sat down with the others, holding the katana at his side as he did. “Sis had to toughen up real hard to succeed mom and dad when it turned out I wasn’t good enough. I thought she’d hate me because I ended up pushing all the responsibility onto her but all she said was ‘I don’t need you to lead the Kuzuryuus, just stay with me forever all I want is for you to be my Ultimate Big Brother’.” Fuyuhiko said, even holding a weapon, even hardened by all the violence he had seen he could make such a soft expression.

Yet, Komaeda despite witnessing his sincerity could not feel like he was part of the moment, once again it felt to him as if he were merely witnessing a dream. “Kuzuryuu-san… are you really okay with that? Are you okay not having the talent to be able to stand on your own strength.”  
  
“That’s fine, standing strong on your own is lonely you know.” Fuyhuiko had begun to clutch the katana.  
  
“Aren’t you supposed to be the older sibling though? Didn’t you want to grow up into a proper man?” Komaeda had no idea why he was asking these questions, they stood in the way of Fuyuhiko’s happiness and that was all he wished for.  
  
“That’s fine. I can stay a kid forever, if it means I can stay with Natsumi. That’s better than growing up alone and losing everything. I’m babyfaced anyway soo…” Fuyuhiko began to mumble as he finally admitted his own greatest insecurity, the fact that he who had been so desperate to grow up in the past looked like nothing more than a child in the eyes of others.  
  
“Hey, Kuzuryuu-kun. Since when did you carry a katana around like that?”  
  
“This sword? It showed up on the doorstep since when I was a baby, and my parents gave it to me. I’ve always had it… it’s special to me.” Fuyuhiko said, muttering as if he was trying to grasp at the memory of a dream he had forgotten the moment he woke up.

“It’s just a sword.” Kirigiri said again curling her fingers in front of her mouth. “We should coordinate a plan so that two students are never alone. Ideally it would be best if all of us could band together under one leader, hmmm as to what type of person that should be probably someone the exact opposite of Komaeda-senpai.”  
  
“Hey, Kyoko if you wanna fight just get into a bare knuckles brawl and finish it already this passive agressive shit is really pissing me off.” Fuyuhiko said, clearly reaching his limit.  
  
However, Komaeda once again raised his hands in front of him to declare his innocence. “Oh no, I couldn’t agree more. I’m the least suited person here to lead us.”  
  
Fuyuhiko took a deep breath, puffing his round cheeks up to hold it for a few moments to calm down. The gesture was so cute Komaeda found himself staring. “Alright, alright. It’d be best if we could go back to the days with everybody in the class together. I don’t care about wrecking these guys to get revenge I just… I want to see everybody’s faces again at the end of golden week. That school is the only time I got to be a normal kid.” When he saw both Komaeda and Kirigiri staring at him, Fuyuhiko scratched at the back of his head feeling awkward. “Of course I deal with this live or die stuff on a daily basis I’m just pissed off other kids got dragged into it, we gotta stop it as soon as we can.”

Kirigiri spoke up, “In the past you said you all threw a party to get along? Well if I think of someone whose the opposite of Komaeda-senpai, it’s Nanami-senpai. Why don’t we persuade her to be our leader?”  
  
Fuyuhiko slammed his hand on the ground. “Shit, I know. Let’s all go to the beach together, Natsumi, Komaeda, you and Chiaki. That way we’ll solidify our alliance as the ones who are going to solve this mystery and bust up those terrorists.”

 _Wait… how did this get to making plans at the beach? Weren’t we talking about murder this seems inappropriate to use it as a bonding opportunity._ However, Komaeda said nothing as he looked in between Kirigiri and Fuyuhiko excitedly making plans. _Oh, I get it… those two are lonely huh? It’s my fault for being a poor friend to Kuzuyruu-kun, it’s not my place to speak up._

A moment later however he did learn exactly what his place was. “Well, still we need somebody to do all the lame grunt work to fund the trip and buy tickets. Somebody with nothing better to do.” Fuyuhiko began.  
  
“Oh, Komaeda-senpai. You can be a proper upperclassman after all. How wonderful for you.”

“Yes, I agree how wonderful!” Komaeda said, “Cleaning and doing chores out of the spotlight is the one thing I’m good at.”    
  
“Are you guys bonding over how much you both hate Komaeda? Come on man, you’re Komaeda!” Fuyuhiko said as he shook his friend's shoulder, trying to shake some sense into him.  
  
“Still, it’s odd how those two can disappear and reappear despite being internationally wanted terrorists with appearances that stand out like that, perhaps they’re using disguises like the man with twenty faces…” Kirigiri said, still considering.  
  
“It’s okay you can just say you like detective things.” Fuyuhiko pointed out.  
  
“No, I don’t! Shut up!” The normally ice cold girl lost her cool in that moment.

 

😈

 

Catching up to the present moment, that was how once again while his friends the main characters were off patrolling the city trying to find the terrorists, Komaeda found himself steadily grinding the meaningless sidequests and performing errands for them. He doubted he would gain much exp from this, but it was something someone had asked of him so he at least wanted to give them what they wanted. They had already gone out of their way to acknowledge him who did not deserve to be acknowledged in the first place after all.  
  
Last year there were several incidents of drama that had broken out into severe fights, some accidents and an almost death. Even though Komaeda claimed to live an uneventful life, he had just stepped outside of those events and tried to walk along the border lines. He should have known the moment he started to avoid others they would see him as an outsider.  
  
His trademark bad luck earned him the nickname shinigami, and he became a scapegoat of sorts for the misfortune that fell upon the school. They called it a curse that was following him around. He was involved even when he was not involved, remaining invisible on the edge of things was a truly difficult thing. It took a lot of hard work to achieve nothing significant at all with himself.  
  
Nanami Chiaki took the opposite path of him. She got far too involved in others, always throwing herself in right away, always trying to mend the bonds between others. She was somebody that everybody liked, but Komaeda always felt something imperonsal from her. Soembody who loves everybody equally must have had trouble seeing others on an individual basis… though, he was hardly one to talk.

Perhaps it was petty envy talking, because they had both admired all of their classmates and yet Nanami was somebody who was able to say the right thing and become the center of their class. Perhaps it was just envy over those words ‘I love you”, the words that left her lips so easily when others needed to hear them the most.

Once, Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko had asked him. “Why don’t you and Chaiki get along? You both are always going on about the group and everything. You both want everybody to be happy right?”  
  
Komaeda had answered him honestly without even thinking about it. “It’s because we loved the same thing…”  
  
The same thing…?  
Hope?  
Their class?  
Or… the same person?  
  
Komaeda got another headache as he thought of that. There was another reason for his headache though, and why he was contemplating Nanami at the moment. One of the errands he had been sent out was to go fetch her from her room.  
  
At first she declined coming with him.  
  
“Actually I was thinking about going to the hospital to work part time helping Tsumiki-san.” Komaeda had said.  
  
“Oh, if that’s the case than Tsumiki-san could always use more help. She really… really needs help…”

 _Oh, so you’ll go if somebody else needs help but not me…_ Komaeda thought but he did not voice it.  
  
Nanami agreed to go to the hospital with him on one condition, that he carry her there. There was one more consequence Nanami had always paid for always being at the center of others, these days in her second year of school she was so worn out she was perpetually sleepy. However apparently she was not sleepy enough right now that being carried on his back she could not leave him alone with his thoughts.  
  
Wait no, that was actually for the best. His thoughts tended to be meaner to him than most school bullies. Chiaki opened a single eye and looked at him through the half lidded crescent. “Komaeda, I’m worried about the others…”

“I’m sure you are, that’s what makes you the heart of our class Nanami-san.”  
  
“Don’t you think that role’s a little bit restrictive… you know I mean, I guess I’ve got like everybody’s heart strings tied to me and everything.”

“Of course, that’s why I don’t play such a role, but I’m happy to be your support whenever you need me. People are main characters in their own lives, and support characters in the lives of others but I think the ideal way to live is to be a support character full time.”  
  
“That’d be nice if that were possible, but a thing called ego gets in the way…no matter how much you try to repress it, it always reasserts itself.”  
  
“You know for a girl who always plays video games you’re really observant, Nanami-san.”  
  
“That’s why I’m glad I’m no good at video games. If that’s all there was to me then... I’d just be an empty girl who’s good at games.”  
  
“Do you always have philosophical discussions when riding on people’s backs?”  
  
“No, just with you. You’re the only one who’s so observant of others to notice this stuff. I think if I was on the strong looking back of an empty headed boy I’d just be sleeping peacefully and looking cute right now.” Chiaki said, as she rested her chin on his shoulder. “Being cute is wasted on you though.”  
  
“Well yeah, because I like guys.”  
  
“Hey, Komaeda… I want to help everybody but. In the past I thought the words I love you would be enough so I gave them to others again and again so… I wonder why I’m alone right now.”  
  
“Everybody in the class thinks you’re amazing, Nanami-san.”  
  
“That might be… a restrictive role too.” Nanami spoke in a quiet voice only between the two of them. “Actually, I’m jealous Komaeda. The words I wanted to hear the most ‘I love you’, I never got to hear them from the person I wanted to most hear them from, I would have given it to him but he…”

At that moment Komaeda’s headache increased. The world in front of him blurred and he saw all sorts of colors. He saw fireworks bursting in front of the sky, they were temporary things like cherry blossoms too. He could only watch them from a distance. Once he had seen them with a boy who died. The next time he saw them with the boy’s reincarnation, and the boy whispered sweet words to him.

 _Jealous of me? That’s cruel, cruel, cruel,cruel to say. After all Nanami-san you have everybody and I only have, I only have… after all that loss I only gained one thing...  
_  
He had a boy whose face he could not remember. Perhaps it did not matter if he remembered that boy’s face or not because that boy’s face always seemed to be changing. He died and was reborn again. He made all sorts of faces that Komaeda could not read or understand, and when that boy got angry at him Komaeda felt guilty because he could never grasp the full depths of his anger. He wanted to at least be able to understand that boy’s emotions the same way the boy struggled so hard to understand his, but he could not understand the normal emotinos, or a normal boy, he could not understand what it was like to lose things because he had been already lost everything to that point and had become numb to it.  
  
When Komaeda snapped back to reality, they had already made it to the hospital and he was being led around by Tsumiki Mikan. He tried not to question it too much, when life went too fast and passed him by. He was just a bystander anyway it made sense.  
  
Chiaki had been assigned the role of helping Mikan with her nursing duties, while Komaeda would clean rooms unseen in the background.  
  
However, in the process of helping out for the day, Mikan being Mikan there were several incidents at her parent’s clinic. The first one where she left to go get some bandages from a closet and then suddenly everything from the closet fell on top of her. Somehow she had managed to fall and became wrapped in the bandages by the time both Nanami and Komaeda caught up with her.  
  
Nanami immediately went to Mikan’s side and began to soothe her, muttering. “Hey, Mikan it’s alright. You didn’t ruin anything there are lots of bandages in the hospital. You’re not clumsy, your hands are always so precise when you’re dealing with patients.”  
  
Meanwhile Komaeda in the background picked up everything and sorted it back into the closet. The sight of a mess bothered him, after all he could not stand looking at himself, it was a good thing it was easier to clean this closet though as there was little to do about himself.  
  
The next time Mikan was transporting a comatose patient on a stretcher, only to trip and have the patient fall on top of her. As he was in a coma she could do nothing but call and whine for help. Chiaki once again immediately went to Mikan’s side to soothe her. “It’s alright, he’s asleep he probably didn’t even notice. You’ve been tending to him every single day nobody cares that you made one mistake.”  
  
At the same time Komaeda was the one who actually had to lift the body onto the stretcher again and help another nurse move him to the bed, and then clean up the IV contents that had been sprayed on the floor.  
  
The third time Mikan overworked fell asleep in one of the hospital beds. This time she did not knock over anything or start crying, Komaeda and Chiaki had just found her by accident. Looking over her, Chiaki whispered to Komaeda. “You should really follow her around and help her out. She needs the-”

“Attention. She’s just acting out for attention you know.” Komaeda said immediately, breaking his silence now that Tsumiki could not hear him.  
  
“She’s one of our classmates you shouldn’t say that about her…” Chiaki hissed back at him, still in a whisper.  
  
_I’m even able to make Chiaki of all people speak in an unpleasant voice, I might have talent after all._ Komaeda thought as he smiled back at her. “So, what you think in response is ‘If Tsumiki-san wants attention I’ll just give it to her’ but that doesn’t actually solve the problem. It’s not like you actually care how she feels you’re just trying to be nice.”  
  
“At least I’m trying to be nice, unlike some people…”  
  
“She makes you uneasy doesn’t she? She sets you off the same as me, except Tsumiki-san always looks so pathetic so you feel bad that you’re just a little bit scared of her, so instead of trying to deal with her you just keep her at a distance with that niceness of yours.” Komaeda’s eyes lowered on the form of the sleeping Tsumiki. His feelings were just like that of Kumagawa, while they were so in common he felt repulsed like pushing two of the same sides of a magnet together he also could not let go of this person. “If you understood her though you’d know that’s just as bad. A little bit of attention is never going to satisfy her, she’s just going to keep demanding more and more until she wants everything from you.”  
  
“Mikan’s nice though, and she’s really gentle, she just wants friends who don’t push her around.”  
  
“It’s not about being nice, it’s about who she is fundamentally as a person. She’s lacking in something, she’s empty and broken in a way you can’t slap a bandaid on with kindness, so she tries to make up with it by getting the attention of others, it’s just she’s too stupid to be manipulative so she comes off looking pathetic instead. In her mind I’m sure she’s just embracing a role everybody else gave her and she thinks she’s controlling things that way… I’m sure all the accidents today weren’t accidents at all.” Komaeda said, and as he looked at Mikan in the bed he suddenly felt another headache. The person lying in the bed in front of him was not Mikan but rather himself, sick with fever looking on death’s door. He hated how he looked, pale, pathetic, clammy, there was sweat falling off his fingertips he must have been sticky with death and yet there was a boy who held his hand. It was a much more pleasurable warmth then the fires of the fever that threatened to burn him up. He grabbed his head again, wondering why he was seeing things that were not there, _it’s just Mikan-chan… you’re probably just talking about yourself in your assessment of her that’s why you’re seeing you in her place. You’re just saying the things about yourself you’re too cowardly to admit by making it about her…_

Chiaki finally snapped, though she only showed that emotion as a small and tired sigh. “You’re always like this Komaeda… I’m too tired I’m going to go home and take a nap.”  
  
“Like what? I’m not like anything…” Komaeda said.

“Whatever keep repressing yourself… You can finish without me can you?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll bring your money out after this.” Komaeda said as he looked at the image of Chiaki’s back as she walked away. This time it was definitely his fault. Fuyuhiko asked him to help with Nanami, and he had purposefully gone out of his way to drive her off.

 _See. I can take the blame for things, Kirigiri-san._ Komaeda finished the rest of his shift in silence. If he had stayed silent to begin with, things would have gone a lot better he thought. Mikan’s parents paid him in cash, and MIkan bowed again and again asking him to apologize to Chiaki for causing her so much trouble.

 _I don’t get an apology even though I’m the one who stayed  around and cleaned up after your messes?_ Komaeda thought as he began to walk in the street again. As he counted the money, between the two of them they had enough to buy tickets to take the bus for everybody and they could even invite Mikan along too. He had no idea how this would help solve a murder but at least if an event like this happened like a special event in a game, he could watch the smiles of everybody getting along even if he was just one of the npcs and not one of the featured story characters.  
  
After almost an entire day of most of the random accidents affecting Tsumiki instead of him, Komaeda suddenly walked into a person in the middle of the road the moment after he slipped his wallet back into his pockets.  
  
The two of them collided and then Komaeda managed to step on his foot in exactly the wrong angle that sent both of them falling forward, Komaeda on top and the stranger in black on the bottom. Their bodies were just so long and lanky that they ended up becoming entangled in each other and a mess of limbs. Komaeda threw his hands out to try to catch himself and ended up grasping somewhere warm. He looked down to see his hand had landed on the man’s crotch, and immediately jumped back to his feet. “Ah, sorry about that I’ll disappear forever now!” He said as he ran off in the opposite direction.  
  
Enoshima Junko snickered behind Hinata Izuru. “All you needed to do was steal his wallet you didn’t have to have a full blown romcom moment with him.”

“...” Izuru stayed silent ignoring her.  
  
“Do you need a moment there buddy? I guess you lost it in the virtual world but in the real world aren’t you still technically a virgin?”  
  
“Unlike you whose both a terrible person in the real and virtual worlds.” Izuru finally snapped back  
  
When Komaeda made it to Chiaki’s house, he reached into his pocket only to find it empty. Then, he upturned his pocket. “Oh um… it must have fallen out of my pocket when I fell.”

  
Chiaki tilted her head. “What fell out?”  
  
“My __”

“Your what?”  
  
“I lost my ____.” Komaeda tried to speak again, only to find himself completely unable to say the word. Several times in the past he had been unable to say what he really wanted to say but this was getting ridiculous, so ridiculous even a clown thought it was too much. “They stole my ____ and the word ____…”

Chiaki looked up from the blankets she had wrapped around her. “You know Komaeda if you had just apologized for earlier I’d be fine with it, but you’re just being weird again. It’s like you hide behind that weirdness to shield yourself from the consequences of your actions.”  
  
“No wait I was really trying to bring the ____ to you, I just lost it… I can’t, the words they won’t…” Perhaps it really was him though, after all he was always getting wires crossed in his brain, and he had smashed his head hard yesterday perhaps he had gotten a whole new set of wires crossed, and the sparks were finally emitting. “Like you could understand! You who always says what they want! You who always says the right thing! Who always knows what to do! The perfect girl! I want the words to come out of my mouth they just won’t, you have no idea how that feels like!”  
  
Komaeda finally snapped, and slammed the door. On the other side of it, whatever anger had welled up within him instantly evaporated leaving him feeling nothing more than hollow. _I should have just apologized, Nanami even said it would be fine if I just apologized… I guess Kirigiri’s right and I do just blame others._

He wanted to explain his situation but he did not think anybody would believe him. That was right nobody in this world would understand someone like him, so he decided once again to go talk to a nobody.

 

😈

 

Somehow, inevitably he always seemed to end up back at Kumagawa’s. He did not even particularly like visiting his senpai, but it had become a bad addictive habit of his, like smoking. 『The world is fundamentally absurd, in that context the default should be doubting reality not accepting it.』

“Before you accuse the world of being absurd you should look at yourself and realize how absurd of a person you are, senpai.” Komaeda said coldly in response.  
  
Kumagawa took a bite out of the apple he was holding. He chewed loudly and with his mouth open. 『I am my own world. Everyone has their own little internal world - a forbidden garden only they can enter. Each person follows its own internal logic - individuality. And the logic of one world means nothing in another. Therefore can you really judge others? Can you recognize them as absurd?』  
  
“That would also sound good if I wasn’t pretty sure you had not stolen half of that speech from a video game. If I wanted to be lectured by Kiryu Yoshiya I would just play the game.” Komaeda said. One had to be strict around Kumagawa, because Kumagawa flowed freely like water, and had little understanding of boundaries. Komaeda sometimes feared that one day Kumagawa might just disappear because the stuff that made him up had such loose connections it melted into liquid. Komaeda had defined himself and Mikan as empty, but Kumagawa was really the master of that, he flowed from one moment to the next merely changing his mask in reaction to it, even though Komaeda knew by now the inside of him was pure chaotic emotions. Formless like water, so he could be anything, he could be a weak stream one moment and a mighty river the next.  
  
『You really like games, don’t you Nagito-chan?』  
  
Komaeda immediately stopped waxing poetically in his head and instead his cheeks reddened giving color to his otherwise colorless cheeks as he looked away. “N-no, I don’t have any interests at all. There’s nothing I like enough to stand out.”

『If you both like games so much you should get along.』  
  
“Stop telling me to get along with someone I hate, you’re supposed to be different from everyone else… because you’re…” _Like me._ He wanted to say it but the words died on his tongue. It seemed like an incredibly cruel insult to his senpai to compare him to himself of all people.

『You can still get along with someone you hate. Enemies and friends are basically the same thing right? Being hated and loved are just two sides of the same coin.』  
  
“Only incredibly lonely people like you say that, senpai.”

 『The world is harsh, and Nagito-chan’s world is especially harsh.』  
  
“You still haven’t answered my question. Stop distracting me.”

『But having long drawn out banter sessions with Nagito-chan is so fun.』

“I know it’s not just my brain being broken, I… I think so anyway, I admit like you said I’m not the best judge on reality but something’s definitely wrong. I can’t say _____.”

『Didn't that happen in a video game?』  
  
"Yeah, kingdom hearts why? That's a game and this is reality."

『Nagito-chan is so cute when he likes video games.』  
  
"Shut up, there's nothing cute about me, my entire being is the antithesis of cute." 

『It's a good thing that Nagito-chan is the antithesis because I'm the thesis of cute and to paraphrase Hegel advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis.』  
  
"Paraphrase your ass. You're probably just quoting another video game there's no way you've read Hegel."

『How can I paraphrase your ass? It's so cute I need to describe it with full prose, well anyway. That kind of thing is probably an abberation.』  
  
“Abberation?”

『Abnormal and irrational. It’s a term for supernatural events and entities that surpass abnormals, if you were to ever meet a non-human they’d be an abberation. Most supernatural events in reality are just lapses in the perception of reality right? What we think of supernatural events are just a metaphor for the cracks in our own vision.』  
  
“A metaphor?" 

『Mmm, you know like abnormals right. It’s just a metaphor for adolescence.』  
  
“Adolescence?”

Kumagawa took another bite of his apple, throwing the core away he picked up another one and began chewing. The entire time he had been speaking with his mouth open which was annoying to Komaeda, but Komaeda wondered what had made his senpai so hungry.『It’s because I’m empty on the inside, so I’m devouring apples.』Kumagawa answered the thought before Komaeda even spoke it. 『You’re making such a wonderful straight man today, I guess I win the absurdity contest between the two of us even though I’m the only straight man here… but that too is just a loss because all it means is I’m a bigger weirdo.』  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai please the explanation before you start spiraling into self loathing like a screw being driven into a board.’

『What a beautiful metaphor for my existence. Nagito-chan always says such pretty things, that’s why I’m glad this piece is an absurdist comedy that focuses on long dialogue conversations. So, so, adolescence right, people become self involved for the first time and believe they’re the most unique existences in the world. They think they’re impossible to understand and spend the entire time trying to figure themselves out, thus abnormalities arise an obsession with figuring out the abnormal in you and mastering it.』

“You have to understand yourself before you can understand others I guess…” Komaeda wondered why that had to be such a one way or the other rule, it seemed unfair to those who could not understand themselves but still wanted to appreciate others.

『Then, there are the minus. We’re unable to grow properly because we’ve been broken and stunted, so, looking at our internal wounds we try to hurt others in the way we’ve been hurt, we push all of that damage outwards.』

“I’m not like that, I’m trying my best to repress myself and hold it all in, and not ask for anything from others or give anything to others.”

『We can’t grow up either, because it all just cycles back, we hurt others and are hurt again and caught in that circle we fail to ever grow or learn properly from our mistakes. The abuse we’ve endured doesn’t make us strong, it just weakens us more and more. We hate everyone for not looking our way when we’re suffering and living their own lives, but it turns out we’re just as self obsessed as them in the end, we’re only looking at our own wounds, our own broken perception.』  
  
No… That was wrong.  
Kumagawa took pride in the minus more than anything else, even if it was a lie that he did not really believe he would tell it for the sake of others. Hating himself but not letting that get in the way of loving others with all he had, that was the senpai he knew.  
  
The world is fundamentally absurd, that was what Kumagawa had said. There was no such thing as fundamental laws, there was no structure holding it all together.  
  
Each person lives in their own world, and the boundaries between worlds can never be truly crossed. A forbidden garden. Stealing away someone’s world was like stealing away an apple. People kept things hidden for a reason, they were forbidden for a reason, people chose carefully what parts of themselves to present to the world and what to hide. Getting close to someone just meant exposing what was never meant to be exposed.  
  
A person dwelling within their own world was fundamentally alone. Their udnerstanding of another person’s world was just a delusion on their part. Komaeda was sitting, staring at the mirror between them. On the other side Kumagawa was certainly there he knew for sure, but it was a mirror and not a window.  
  
He could not peer into Kumagwa’s world no matter how much he wanted to. He could only see his own reflection staring back at him. No matter how much he wanted to escape his own perceptions because of how faulty he knew them to be, he would only be able to judge Kumagawa’s world through his eyes.  
  
Everybody should be as equally blind as he was and yet he somehow managed to be worse at this then others. A true talent. A one in a million prodigy. It was only a terrible accident that led him to being so close to understanding Kumagawa, because Kumagawa’s life was unfortanate just like his, because they both had such terrible luck of course they ran into each other. 

A cruel calculation of probability allowing two such people to exist. Yet, neither of them could comfort each other either, as they both sat on opposite sides of the mirror.

People had to understand themselves to be able to see others and leave the self obsession of adolescence. People had to look at others to be able to understand themselves. Komaeda thought that was just an unsolvable equation from his perspective.  
  
After all, he could not understand himself nor others. He did not want to look at himself nor others. Even if he looked at others, all he would see was himself in the mirror looking back. If he reached out and smashed the mirror that laid as the borderline between their worlds, then their world would be destroyed before he could ever see it.  
  
Someone like him who could do neither, how was he supposed to grow? Kumagawa and him had just taken similar paths to reach this point, that was why he could deduce their similarities. The winding and twisted paths taken to reach here, those themselves were mirror images. At one point they were but youths, and then suddenly they turned into young adults. Growing older they rotted away like wilted cherry blossoms clinging to a branch, knowing that once they were blown away they would be promptly forgotten and no one in the world would know of their existences.  
  
So, the two of them fantasized over and over again. What would it be like to obtain an immortal body, to live their entire lives without dying. For Kumagawa his fantasy had just come true, but whether it was just a fantasy or not, they both lived that way, living without dying, suffeing over and over again refusing to die when everyone else would, prolonging a pointless life.  
  
The reason why?  
They just hated idea of others around them dying, so they came to despise death. Wishing others to live while you yourself lived like you were already dead was a contradiction though.  
  
The contradictions they carried around were getting too heavy.  
So, they had settled down to rest, but all they could do was lean their heads against opposite sides of the mirror.  
They had reached the same end point of their paths, the same conclusion to a long, meandering, and pointless story.  
“If we’re going to end up sad and if that’s fine, then we can just laugh alone forever.”  
It’s like they were living hated by life itself  
They spoke of happiness but they never even once understood it.  
Things like love, friendship, happiness, those things could only be obtained for them in comical dreams.

 _Dreams…?_ _  
_ _This is… This is…_ _  
_

Ah, sorry did I go off on another tangent again, telling this story with such an unpleasant perspective character and an unpleasant narrator combined, for enduring it this far you have my praise. These thoughts I always carry with me are so essential to my nature I thought they would be easy to convey, but just as I'm always remembering them I'm always trying to forget as well, and then the moment I put them into words it becomes hard to explain, oh but I'm sure it's much harder for you to listen to dear reader. 

Komaeda felt another headache and crumpled forward. Unlike everybody else who had been ignoring his chain headaches all day, Kumagawa imediately dropped his apple and let it roll across the floor and went to grab the sides of Komaeda’s hands, cradling his head and guiding it into his chest.  
  
“Your chest is way too flat senpai, I prefer guys with bigger chests.”

『Me too. We can finally agree on something.』  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai, we’re nineteen and twenty when are we going to grow up already?”

『I don’t know.』  
  
“You’re always babbling but you don’t say anything at all.”

『That’s because I know nothing.』  
  
“I think I’m going to go try to talk to Nanami-san again.” Komeada said, standing up and turning away. He had looked at the mirror, that is to say himself for about as long as he could bear it this time. As usual, Kumagawa’s words helped him little in finding a conclusion he had just up and decided on one on his own.  
  
『Make sure to bring me more food next time!』  
  
“If I didn’t bring you any food you’d starve to death, huh? That’d probably be better off for everybody.”

『If I die then I’d like to be one of those poltergeist ghosts so I can continue spitting others with my existence even into the next life.』  
  
“You’re such an optimist senpai…” Komaeda said, as he shut the door behind him. “There’s no such thing as a next life, this one world is all we have, that’s why you can’t let it get destroyed no matter what, otherwise everything will fall apart like glass in your hands and you can’t put it back together.”

『Losing things isn’t so bad, drama queen. There are new things you can obtain.』  
  
“Oh, like what?”

『In a word…money. That’s what someone once told me. 』  
  
“No, aren’t there other things?”

『Ahhhh? Is there really anything else in this world?』  
  
“Like you know… Love?”

『Ahhhh? Love? Oh yeah, I know love. The convenience store was selling it. 』  
  
“The convenience store! Was selling it!”

『Yeah, for 298 yen.』  
  
“What a cheap thing love is! A bargain!” Komaeda decided this conversation was kind of stupid. “Well, I’m a high schooler so I don’t have money for both food and love, so it looks like you’ll have to keep living without love like always senpai.”  
  
Maybe it wasn’t all about love, it was more about having others around to help out with perception like how Fuyuhiko could confirm the things that he was unable to see, or when he was seeing something nobody else saw because he could not trust his own but... but love was a nice thing to have, like a luxury, but luxuries didn’t often go to sale for 298 yen.

 

😈

 

Izuru Hinata appeared right in front of Nanami Chiaki. Rather than scream at the monster with glowing red eyes, or call for her parents, she immediately threw her arms around him. “You… you’re finally… all that time I kept thinking about how I just wanted to play video games with you again.”  
  
Izuru had been cruel in erasing Komaeda’s memories of him before entering the game, but he had also been cruel in leaving Chiaki’s memories of Kamukura in tact. He had been doubly cruel, because as usual he wanted things both ways, he wanted everything and nothing from people.  
  
He felt a fresh wave of self loathing for his past self, and the idea that Chiaki did not even fault him for what he did, that she had immediately embraced all of him was heavy on him. A heaviness on his fragile self, that was actually two selves patched together, one right arm, one left leg, one right foot, one left hand, something like that. He was a frankenstein’s monster of two dead people who could never return to their previous state of being. Even his name was sloppily stitched together, Hinata Izuru because he did not want to go on calling himself Kamukura after that project and Hajime after that foolish boy.  
  
He wanted her to hug him so hard that he would split in half, because then maybe Chiaki might understand what kind of broken person he was. Not the school, not Enoshima Junko, but the boy who had met her on the fountain that day the boy who had had nothing ever happen to him was equally broken and self absorbed.  
  
Because Chiaki would have been happy if just one person noticed her, and reached out to her, while she was busy reaching out to everybody else. She just wanted to have one person treat her normally, not see her as a savior, just like Komaeda did and he a normal boy had been too absorbed in his own inferiority.

He wanted to run away but he had decided to stop with that. It was going to be awkward, it would be forced, he would look terrible… ah he was getting embarrassed already at least it might turn out better than with Shiranui. “Hey, when we first met do you think we were in love? Is that why we waited for each other at the fountain every day.”  
  
“I think we were…”  
  
“Yeah, I think we were too but… I was immature. I wanted to love you but I only saw your talent.”  
  
“But I was really happy that you fell in love with me all the same. I mean it.”  
  
“I know, thanks.”  
  
“I loved you, too. My feelings for you were real. But, I didn’t even think of myself once back then. Maybe… I was afraid of thinking of myself, because I thought everybody would find out there was nothing to me, I was just an empty girl who liked games. I thought if you loved me, you would love me for me.”  
  
“...Chiaki.”  
  
“Hey, Izuru. I did so many things wrong. Can we hit a reset button on our relationship? Can we load a previous save? No… that’s not possible is it.”  
  
“You did so many things wrong? Upupupfffft, no it’s just the opposite. If you had screwed up a little more your precious classmates might have seen you as human instead of just as a symbol," Junko giggled.  
  
“Oh, Junko’s here too…” Chiaki said drily.  
  
“It’s because you made yourself into such a symbol that you became the perfect little sacrifice to break everybody’s last resistance against me. Nanami-senpai couldn’t save us so no one can. They were all waiting for you to save them that’s why they were so easy to manipulate.”  
  
“I know… I… I hit a game over. I should have been able to save everyone, I loved all of them… why wasn’t that enough? Why wasn’t I enough?”  
  
As he saw Chiaki’s form in front of him start to destabilize and pixelate he shot a glare back at Junko. “Chiaki,  that girl is has no redeeming qualities, and she’d never make a good example in all aspects excepting this one. Enoshima Junko is living proof, that after first love you can always find a second love. You can always try again and again. That’s why that annoying couple is always breaking apart and somehow finding themselves together again. You can hit the reset button as many times as you want, you can start over with those people again and let them know the real you.”  
  
“Izuru… I… I don’t regret meeting you even though it ended terribly.”  
  
“I don’t regret meeting you either.”  
  
“I want to try over again.”  
  
“Sure, as many times as you want.”  
  
“Izuru, did you love me?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Do you still love me?”  
  
“Sorry, there’s someone else I love now.”  
  
“Do you love them more than you did me?”  
  
“Yeah, because I love every part of them, their flaws, and their likable traits. I had to look at those things.”  
  
“Thank you for loving me once.”  
  
“Thank you for loving me too.”  
  
Before their voices could fade away, Chiaki suddenly grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt  and pulled him down to her level. “I… I don’t want to be in an imaginary world forever. You’ll keep your promise and show me the real world right?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Then… Just like last time, kill me again.”  
  
“Huh?” Hinata stopped. He had explained this to Enoshima Junko already. They were to come into this world and persuade them to leave the perfect dream world for the imperfect real world, to wake up from a happy dream and continue on with a nightmare like reality. He had already made the choice to continue living so he wanted to reach out a hand to his friends just as he had been helped by people reaching out to him over and over again in the past. They could also break them out of this world simply by killing them, but that was a health risk to their bodies if the shock was too much.  
  
“I can’t leave people behind, Komaeda and Mikan are here. I don’t want to abandon my friends.”  
  
“Selfless to the end.”  
  
“Stupid to the end.” Junko interjected.  
  
“You’re just selfish to the end…” Izuru muttered back at her until he looked at Chiaki again. “I… I’m afraid Chiaki, last time I just watched you die I didn’t do anything because I’m a pathetic person who can’t do anything on his own and sits still unless others push him…”  
  
Suddenly, Chiaki got into his face energetically once more. Just like a switch she somehow flipped between the sleepy and despondent girl, to the energetic girl he had once known last year. “I know a simple trick to make things sound less pathetic, you simply need to add the word courage.”  
  
“That sounds like the best…” Izuru said, amazed.  
  
“You can make almost anything sound positive by adding the word courage.”  
  
“That can’t be right. I refuse to believe that japanese is structured that way.”  
  
“Shall I demonstrate?” SHe let go of him and backed off.  
  
Izuru’s red eyes locked on her, getting serious. “Bring it. If you can satisfy me, I’ll do whatever you wish.”  
  
“Very well. I accept your challenge. You’re like a phoenix from the flame Izuru.”  
  
“No uh… I’m not anything cool like that.”  
  
“Very well, I’ll begin. The courage to skip school and play video games all day.”  
  
“Not bad… it sounds like you’re deliberately throwing away the standard education and devoting your life to a more chosen hobby even though it comes with the risk of not being accepted by society.”  
  
“The courage to sleep in until noon.”  
  
“Amazing, you’re choosing to buck the schedules of everyone else and live entirely by your own clock, what an amaizng independent person even though you’re really probably just having a sleep dysfunction.”  
  
“Then please... “ She looked him in the eye, tears brimming in the corners of her eye. “The devour me courageously, one last time.” He wondered why she had not cried until now, because Chiaki was just a normal girl after all. She was probably still trying to hold it back for his sake. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, he had the courage to be pathetic.  
  
Nothing could change it no matter how many surgeries underwent, there was still nothing he could do for Chiaki. She was going to die in his arms again, and that was the only affection he could show her. The last time he had stood still and simply watched her die.  
  
This time he raised a finger and said softly, “Bang…” Then dipped her low as if they were in a dance and then suddenly the strings had been cut from her body and it went limp. Bleeding from a hole in her chest, finally seeing and realizing the hole in her chest Chiaki was able to be honest. "I... I wanted you to be the one to save me, Hinata."  
  
"Me too. I wanted to save you too, but I didn't." Tears fell freely from her face, as quickly as she was bleeding. Hinata wondered why it had to come with this, she should have cried a long time ago instead of waiting until now.  "I'm unreliable, so I won't be there in the future to save you either. It isn't easy to make decisions on your own right? But.. because it's you I know you can do it."   
  
He was just a witness after all. He wanted to follow the brilliant star of hope hoping it would lead him somewhere interesting. He was not a complete enough person to take steps on his own, and he did not want Chiaki to be hindered by his incomplete self anymore. Chiaki unlike him was, a normal girl, who could care for others in a normal way, he wanted her to have that life back again especially since he could never return to the normal boy that was Hajime. He did not know if it was his own selfish wish imposed upon her, or he was finally owing up to his selfishness in the past, all he could do was face her with this lopsided and mishapen form of two halves he had accepted and tried to show her all of it. But apparently, he was still lacking in self awareness as he had no idea what kind of face he was making as he looked down at her.   
  
She reached up with a hand, and touched his face. “So you really did cry when I died the first time I see… I’m so happy.” Then, her hand fell limp against him.  
  
Izuru with his head facing away from Junko muttered only to himself. “Don’t get happy over stupid things like that, you don’t have to accept that kind of small happiness…” That was why he could not stand this dream world. That was why he had wanted to tear it apart, because Komaeda and her deserved so much more, because they deserved everything.

When he could see Junko, the misery voyeur hovering around him trying to inspect his face he swatted her away like she was a fly. He wanted Chiaki to be the only one to see the face he made in that moment. Of course she was not that easy to get rid of. The Junko of the past was, but she had become quite peristent, in other words Kumagawa had changed her for the worst.  
  
Finally, still holding onto Chiaki he asked her without looking up. “Did I sound more like Hajime or Kamukura back then?”  
  
“Hmmm, definitely the dumbass.”  
  
“I guess it depends who I’m around…”  
  
Before he could ponder that question of his existence any further suddenly they both noticed the door was open, even though they had deleted all the npcs in this house. Komaeda was standing in the doorway, he had witnessed him shooting Chiaki in the chest.  
  
“A bullet in the chest no that’s… that’s my memory with him… that’s mine…” Komaeda muttered, over and over again. He seemed to be suffering from sensory overload again, experiencing too much of reality at once.  
  
That was Hinata’s fault too, because they were trying to break him to break his world, but it had turned out harder than they had thought. It was hard to break things that were already broken, they just kept breaking into smaller pieces.  
  
“Why… Why…not me...”  
  
Izuru stood up. He moved like he was one with the shadow, and in a moment he was standing tall in front of Komaeda. “It’s because you forgot about me.” He said, before he punched hard into the boy’s gut and then twisted his fist around, twisting that boy’s insides up even further than they already had been.  
  
Komaeda collapsed on the floor coughing up blood. He wanted to vomit but did not want to see what was inside of him, he wanted to keep it all inside, he had been struggling so hard to keep all of it from pouring out even while walking with an open wound on his body. As he lost consciousness again, this time a voice whispered in his ears. _You shouldn’t seek to define love, anything is an acceptable form of love, even dying is a form of love. Oh, I’m so jealous, I’m so jealous dying in the arms of a person that loved him, I’m so jealous, I’ll never die like that._

The voice whispering in his ear, he could not longer distinguish if it was his own or Kumagawa’s, just that the voices had an ugly harmony when they spoke together and kept chattering like that.  
  
He hated.  
Ugly noises.  
So much.  
  
Kumagawa sat in his room blissfully unaware of these events. He rolled over on the desks he was sleeping on, again, and again, moaning in discomofrt, before sitting up once more and resting his elbow on his knee as he looked to the girl in the corner connected to him by chains. When she pretended to ignore him he threw a pillow at her head covered in a paper bag.  
  


Kumagawa picked up another apple, and tried to eat it, only to throw it away immediately after his first bite. 『 This apple tastes terrible. It must be rotted. 』  
  
“It could be poisonous.”

『 If it was a poisoned apple I’d finally be able to sleep. 』

“Then you wouldn’t wake up though, so please bite into it as deeply as you can my hated one.”

『 Good point. 』 He laid back and crossed his hands over his chest like he were laying in a coffin. 『 I wonder when is my princess going to come for me, to wake me with a kiss. 』


	4. Descension of a Princess

Inversion.  
The colors became flipped, black became white, the image of the world twisted in on itself. You were looking at the exact same picture through the exact same eyes and yet it was somewhat different at the same time.

Again, and again Kumagawa took care of his younger classmen Komaeda Nagito and Tsumiki Mikan, and he seemed to be possessed by a strength that those two did not have. In the end though that strength turned out to be a lie. The Kumagawa Misogi who could always stand up on his own no matter what trauma he endured was also another lie.  
  
Instead of supporting them, he was being supported by them. Each of his younger classmen took turns checking on him, and they thought if they stopped this he would die. Not from actively killing himself, but rather consumed by his own apathy and lacking the strength to keep on living. They knew though one thing at the core of his being Kumagawa himself hated dying more than anything else, so they had decided to take care of him.  
  
Still, being around him was like gravity ceasing to function. Once upon a time their senpai had held their hands tightly and became something that grounded them to the earth and kept them from floating away, he would cling onto them no matter what. Now, it seemed like Kumagawa might float away as gravity did not function in his presence, and black became white, and up became down.  
  
Not to change metaphors… I do that a lot don’t I? My thoughts scatter from one moment to the next and… no wait, don’t change metaphors in the middle of changing metaphors my readers will hate me.  
  
In other words Kumagawa gave the sensation that he was drowning without even trying to swim to the surface. When Mikan opened the door that morning, she could swear for a moment it was like a blast of water suddenly shot out from the middle school classroom, like the entire room had been flooded a moment before, and the river of it gushing out threatened to sweep her away. Astronauts trained in water, because floating under the water was a situation similar to zero gravity.  
  
In that moment as she walked in the room she could have sworn she saw Kumagawa floating, his entire presence had a sort of weightlessness. Howeve, she blinked and the next moment he was curled up on the desks, his eyes half moons, crescents he was trying to force shut to get some sleep, trying and failing.  
  
She walked over to him and grabbed him by the back of the collar, dragging him up and forcing him to sit up. He did not sleep with any blankets at all, and often he did not even bother with a pillow claiming he was more used to discomfort than comfort anyway.

Just like she was taking care of a patient who could not move their own body, she almost immediately went to grab at his already half unbuttoned shirt. She slowly pulled it off, trying to catch Kumagawa’s eyes.  
  
Kumagawa’s eyes were out of focus, as if he was staring at her through the water, and the light was refracting around and causing ripples in her image. Or perhaps he was still looking through a dream and trying to determine reality. Either way, Kumagawa’s eyes were shaking with such an intense fear she had never seen before, until she started to take care of him like this. The first time she had saw it, her own nervous demeanor so sensitive it had gripped her like a hand reaching around her heart and squeezing tight, and all of his fear flowed right into her, like pushing her head down under the rushing water at a mouth of a river.

Eventually though his eyes came to focus and the fear faded away. Kumagawa had always hid such apprehension at others before in order to come close to him, but now it seemed to leak out, drip, drip, drip, his body was just covered in too many cracks, she saw them as she looked at his bear chest. He had been hit too hard, and the scars crisscrossing across his chest were where his body had broken and fractured.  
  
Even though his eyes acknowledged her, even though he was passively letting her do as she pleased, Mikan still wanted to hear his voice again. Even if it meant grabbing him by the hair and dragging his head above the surface of the water.  
  
“Hey, Kumagawa-senpai do you know what the difference between the Englosh words ‘lunatic’ and ‘insane’?” Tsumiki Mikan asked.

『They’re both adjectives describing mental abnormality. I’m not quite sure how they differ.』  
  
“Insane probably means to have an innate mental problem, something that calls for professionale treatment, while ‘lunatic’ means to have your sanity temporarily seized by _luna_ which is ‘moon’ in Latin. In nineteenth-century England, if you were a certified lunatic and you committed a crime the severity of the crime would be reduced a notch. The idea was that the crime was not so much the responsibility of the person himself as that he was led astray by the moonlight.”

『Mikan-chan is so smart when she talks about medicine, I love the confident Mikan-chan the best.』

She grabbed him by the hand and guided him out of the classroom step by step, she thought she heard the sounds of dragging and shaking chains as she did, but that could just be a mistake based on how his own body was shaking as he moved.  
  
The middle school building had working pipes still, so when they made it to a locker room the remaining shower head that was not broken off sprayed out water when the knob was turned. She looked at Kumagawa clinging to two whole fingers of her hand like a lost child might being guided solely by that hand because they were too terrified to look at the stranger adult it belonged to and then forced herself to look away.  
  
She kicked a bench over underneath the shower head and Kumagawa sat down on his own, however the moment he did he immediately drifted forward and bent over as if still sleeping. Despite the fact that he was barely moving his body, and he was curled up like that, his voice worked just fine, like his voice was some disembodied thing from that pathetic shell.  
  
“Do you know what the difference between the moon and the star is?”

『One is a pure white light, and the other can only reflect the ligt it is given by others, and the moon also has the dark side of the moon a place where no light reaches.』  
  
“Why is that?”

『The moon turns at exactly the same time as the earth so one part of it as always facing away, so that part is just unlucky, the way it turns is out of sync with everybody else so it’s always facing away from them.』  
  
“I wasn’t talking from an astrology perspective though, it’s just like this… the light star is a temporary source of light, it only shines bright briefly. The moon is a constant, it’s always going to be there.”

『It’s pretty hard to ignore the moon, because it’s light is so soft it’s always present. The reason that shadows exist at night is probably because of the light of the moon, but the light of stars is easily snuffed out. Stars are big losers in other words.』  
  
“You know, big stars when they die create supernovas, but small stars swell up brilliantly for a moment and then collapse in on themselves and snuff out their own light.”

『The girl I love would say that’s boring, that it’s way more fun to burn in a brilliant explosion and then become a black hole that devours everything once you’re gone.』  
  
“To me though you’re much more like one of those tiny stars, senpai.”

『Is that so, then I suppose I’ve disappointed the girl I loved once again...』

“You know in Howl’s Moving there’s a scene where a star falls from the sky, I don’t remember it too well but that scene reminds me of you, senpai.”

『I’m not handsome enough to be Howl. I don’t think I’ll ever be handsome, I’m just a cute little boy, wait unless you’re calling me the demon - mean. I’m being bullied by Mikan-chan of all people.』

A fallen star… that was adding another metaphor on, if only Kumagawa were not made up of so many contradictions I would not have to annoy my dear reader like this with all these criss crossing metaphors.  
  
However, they are connected just a little bit, the ocean reflects the sky right? Just like the moon hangs in the pitch black night sky, its image and inverse also reflects in the ocean. In that way to her Kumagawa was like water, but also he was like a void. If you sank to the bottom of the ocean the place where no light reached, that was probably where you would find Kumagawa.

“Come on you can do this part on your own can’t you?”

『...Too sleepy.』  
  
“All you ever seem to do is sleep.”

『I know pathetic right. All I do is lay around all day, and yet I can’t even sleep you think that’s the one thing I’d be good at. I can’t even get right the thing most people do without even thinking about once a day.』  
  
Kumagawa used to banter in a light hearted manner, but now even his banter quickly became unhinged and started to spiral. Mikan simply picked up the shower head and sprayed him, while he was wearing black boxers. She watched the water watching over faded red marks all over his back, and then drain away.

『It won’t wash out… It never washes out.』  
  
“I know…” She said quietly, lacking her nervous demeanor. She was weak around strong people, the only time she could be even somewhat confident was when she was taking care of people much weaker than her, and that was the only time she could actually voice her thoughts as well and sound somewhat intelligent instead of a frantic hysteric girl. She was always observing things, she was rather observant, but like an artist trying to paint in the rain she never could manifest those images, those things she saw, they all washed away into formless colors.

She turned around to pick up his clothes and fold them when she heard a crash. Immediately MIkan saw that Kumaawa had fallen off the small stool and was lying on the ground watching the water drain away.

『Do you think I could drown in a few centimeters of water?』  
  
“Technically it’s possible.” She answered him like a healthcare professional rather than speaking with concern in her voice.

『You know the story of the ugly duckling?』  
  
“Well of course, every ugly pig girl like me knows that story.”

『I hate that story. People can’t become beautiful overnight, they can only suffer over and over again until they become beautiful. But that’s a lie too, because suffering just gives you ugly scars.』  
  
She reached up and touched his hands, the same hands that were covered in scars like the rest of them. “I thought you said scars were beautiful.”

『They’re just lacerations… burns... pure white like a swan...』Kumagawa had tried to pull his hands away when talking about lacerations, but then suddenly he went slack again. He closed his eyes and spoke as if his words were traveling through water, like a layer of water existed in between him and what he was currently trying to dream about. 『That man said that living was just the accumulation of bad karma, that it slowly dyed pure white things black, and that I was lucky… because I would die while I was innocent, while I was pure white...』

“Do you not like water, senpai?”

『No, at a young age they tried to drown me in it, just like Toko-chan.』  
  
“Toko…?”

『Nevermind, it’s like she never existed so don’t worry about it. She’s like a person you meet in a dream, and then you forget about them when you wake up.』  
  
The sensation of weightlessness, no more like the sensation of falling, a star that had fallen out of the sky falling further, further, she reached and grabbed his wrist this time so he would not fall away from her. She let him back, water still dripping off of him. When she pulled up a set from him and offered him food, his face drifted into the food like he was still asleep. It took him a moment to gain the strength to lift his own head again.  
  
He reached forward and ate with his hands. As he did she sat on one of the desks and watched him, it was like a child who had never been taught table manners. “You know senpai, you and Komaeda-kun are like yin and yang, pitch black and pure white. Except, the dark swirl yin has a little spot of pure white in it, and the light swirl yang has a little bit of pitch black on the inside.”

『Twisted inner reflections of one another...』  
  
“You always frame things in such a gloomy way senpai. What I mean to say is Nagito-chan used to be someone who was always distant from everyone, he was pure white. Yet inside of them there was somebody who in spite of all of that desired to be normal, in spite of what trauma he carried. That was like the old you, the pitch black you that always got close to others and didn’t care if it would hurt. And now it’s like… no matter how many times others cut you, or you cut yourself, there was some part of you that was always kept sectioned away from everything else so it would remain pure, you hid it away from everybody else and even yourself, a scared child, but now that the masks have fallen away that’s all that’s left of you. A scared crying child, afraid of getting hurt.”

In the past he had worn and discarded masks easily, flowing from one moment to the next, like a play in which he had cast himself as all of the parts and needed to run back and forth on the stage. He threw the masks aside easily thinking that he would never run out, that he could keep the show going on forever, that it did not matter how bad the performance was, or if anybody was watching, all he was focused on was keeping it up in its perpetuity.  
  
That was why it had happened without him even noticing it. One day he was sitting atop a pile of masks, and when he looked down at his own hands he did not recognize them, when he reached up to feel the contours of his face he did not recognize that either. All he could see  was the clothes he was wearing over himself.  
  
The day that he met Ajimu in an alleyway, he was thirteen years old. Until that point he was a lost child, that was the first time he had been found, that was the first time he had been looked at in the eye as if he was invisible before that point.  
  
Ajimu took him to her home which was a classic style house with tatami mats, and then exchanged the rags he was wearing with white robes. She asked him what he wanted to do and the first thing that came to Kumagawa’s mind was the games that other children played that he had watched from afar. He wanted to chase her around laughing, he wanted to split popsicles in half and share them.  
  
At that moment Kumagawa had yet to realize Ajimu had a dak side, that she had self interest, that she wanted something out of him. He thought like a child for the first time in his life, he did not even realize the girl in front of him was not a human being, he just saw her as another child.  
  
So he chased her around in the grass and takcled her over. While laughing he thought about how much fun he was having. He thought he really could be saved by this laughter, by this fun, he thought the smile he was wearing on his face was a real one, that he could smile without even having to think about why he was smiling or force his facial muscles to bend and stretch.  
  
No matter what he endured, Kumagawa tried to keep that memory fixed in his heart. He tried to keep the boy in the white robe still there, still laughing. It was the first time, and perhaps the only time he had felt like a human being. To him, that boy in the white robe was his humanity, and to endure everything like a heartless doll he divested away that part of him from himself.

But now all of those masks had fallen away, and the small child was all that was left of himself, and all he could do was feel pain without healing.

Snow white. In that story the hunter was supposed to lock snow white’s heart in a box. He thought he was giving her mercy by telling her to run away, but Kumagawa thought keeping the heart locked in the box forever so Snow White could walk around without ever getting hurt after that would have been the greater mercy.  
  
Even if it meant the prince would never find her, even if it meant that she would never be kissed after falling into a sleep and never wake up. No this isn’t confusing or mixed up, Kumagawa himself is the confusing one, the mixed up existence. He opened his eyes again and realized he had already finished eating, and that Mikan had draped a blanket over him. He stared at her for a moment  wanting to continue their conversation, but he had forgotten where they had stopped. 『Apple. Rotten apple, Dead apple. Apple suicide. Emukae-chan...』  
  
“Emukae-chan?”

『She was someone I knew once, she was with me in the reserve course before transferred to the main course, before I met all you. She was a lot like you, except when she touched things and they rotted away whereas your touch heals things.』  
  
“I don’t… I don’t heal. If I was a good person, I would help you recover Senpai, but sometimes I think that I want you to stay like this so you’ll keep clinging to me forever.”

『That’s fine...』  
  
“No, it’s not fine. It’s like you don’t care what people think about you at all because you already except the worst.”

『Emukae-chan wrapped her own hands around her neck and killed herself. I saw her neck slowly rot away, until one of the vital cords snapped and then she was gone. Her head rolled uselessly to the side and the light from her eye vanished.』

“S-so, I’m so sorry she died…” Tsumiki’s nerves crept back into her voice.

『She didn’t die.』  
  
“Huh?”

『She killed herself but she didn’t die, I undid everything that happened to her.』  
  
“Why did she want to die?”

『She fell in love with the wrong prince. A prince named Yasuke-chan, but his heart already belonged to a princess, and she did not want him to choose so she chose for him. She knowingly bit into the poison apple, and committed apple suicide.』  
  
“Falling in love with the wrong person…” Tsumiki suddenly put a hand down to the side of Kumagawa who was sitting on the edge of the desk wrapped in a blanket. She leaned against him for a moment. “If only I could fall in love with you senpai, because you actually care about other people, because you’re weak and on their level like other people not a princess who stands about everyone.”

『But I’m a guy you know.』  
  
“Yeah, I only like girls, or rather the only time I’ve actually ever wanted someone was with a girl, the rest of the time I just wanted them to want me…”

『That’s not a bad thing. Mikan-chan you should stop trying to get the attention of boys so much and stop offering your body to them.』  
  
“Because I look desperate?”

『No, it’s just… not fun for you… right?』  
  
“Who thinks of things in terms of only whether they’re fun or not, you really are a kid senpai, but that’s okay…” She stopped leaning on him but even as she stood up, she kept her hands folded around her chest. “I’ll forgive you.”

『F..orgiven? How come… Emukae-chan....』 When his fits of sleepiness got bad, even words slipped slowly from his mouth, dripping like gradual drops of water leaking you, 『Wasn’t… forgiven...』  
  
“Bullies, meanies, people that hurt, they’re all forgve but we’re not right? They can all be forgiven and move on and we never stop being victims.”  
  
Kumagawa tried to smile at her. A smile as soft as the moon's light, that could only reflect back the light of others, not generate any brightness of its own.   
  
That smile only made tears well in the corners of Mikan’s eyes, but she hid them from him as she quickly turned away. As she wanted to see her star shine again, even if it was just a pinprick of light on the night sky, the Kumagawa who was always struggling to shine, the light that he had made had illuminated her once, so gently, so softly, as if embracing all of her at once in its warmth.

As she finished redoing some of the bandages on his body, she pulled his shirt back on and left him there in a button up shirt and boxers. If he was cold he could dress himself the rest, it’s not that he couldn’t, he was usually just too apathetic to bother. She knew once a week he was driven by compulsion to actually leave his room to get shonen jump, as if compulsion was the only thing that could propel him at this point.

She left a few bandages behind rolled up, and exchanged the old parts of the medicine box he kept with him and then, carrying the lunch box in her arms she left. As she was walking down the staircase, for a moment she felt a breeze pass by her, as if somebody else had been walkng up the stairs at the exact same time, she felt her heart seize up with something and turned her head only to see nothing at all. Then, she let out an eep as she realized how late she was for work and doubled her speed to make it to her parent’s hospital so she would not be scolded for being late, though if she was scolded she was pretty sure she could get out of it by crying because that was how she got out of most things.  
  
She could swear though when she turned her head she saw the ruffle of a plaid skirt walking past her out of the corner of her eyes, but she could not think about that too long now, she was too busy distracted by Kumagawa and Komaeda and the problem of dealing with them. Komaeda without his hope, and Kumagawa without winning, even if it was just something they pretended to do, a mask they put on, a lie they told, it was a vital lie they clung to and without it it was like both of them had had half of themselves torn away.

 

😈

 

Enoshima Junko raised her red and black boot, and slammed the heel into the door kicking it open. “Waaaaaaaake up, seeeeeeenpaaaaaaii!” She yelled, as loudly as the door slamming announced her entrance.  
  
However, despite how loud her presence was, the room itself was entropy all the energy she brought in disappated and she could not shake up a single thing. The thud of the door opening only echoed emptily until it too faded.      
  
She saw Kumagawa laying on the desks, his blanket discarded and his arm over his eyes to drown out light as he tried to get some sleep. Immedaitely she walked over to him and grabbed him the collar of his long, loose fitting, half unbuttoned white shirt whose sleeves were so big his hands could not be seen and yanked him up. “Your fault, your fault, your fault, this is all your fault Misogi.” She said, hitting his cheeks lightly just to wake him up. However, Kumagawa was impassive still, a stretch of water so still and so silent she could not make a single ripple.  
  
“All I care about is despair!” She grabbed him by the hair and picked him up, shaking him back and forth as she did until he was sitting up. “I’ve never once felt hope towards living, the only thing I was looking forward to was dying drowning in despair!”

She pinched at his cheeks hard with her red nails and played with his sleeping face, stretching his face as far as he could trying to make a smile, then she twisted trying to wake him up once more. “It’s destiny! The reason I was born!”  
  
She reached forward and grabbed his hair and softly slicked it back to expose his forehead, before flicking him again and again in the same spot trying to wake him up, or perhaps just trying to be obnoxious. “You’ve destroyed it! Someone like me, I wasn’t born just to live… what a stupid reason that is! You barged in, stomped on my destiny, destroyed everything I worked for! So why…?”

She dropped him right then, Kumagawa’s body refused to move at all no matter how much she poked and prodded it, no matter how much she pulled at his strings. It was the height of frustration because everybody moved like she wanted, but it was also what made him so interesting because he was the only one to resist her to this extent. “Why… why did you suddenly drop in my life and disappear?”  
  
She held a hand out in front of him. “This is what you wanted isn’t it? You wanted me to reach out for you so why aren’t you even looking at me?” Enoshima Junko only really imagined the feelings of others when they were in despair, because otherwise while she could understand other people and how they would act, and react in each situation with their emotions like strictly defined chemical reactions she saw no use in empathy at all. At this moment she could finally understand what he felt when she had been standing at that balcony, when she had stepped off and suddenly been grabbed by his hand around her wrist, the desperation his voice called out with when he begged her to take his other hand when her grip started to slip and all she gave him in response was her indifference. It was an intense despair that filled her chest and gummed up her veins, like black inky sludge was pumping through her instead of blood at the moment, but it was also a lonely kind of despair.  
  
Ajimu Najimi had mocked her plenty of times about her own ending in the word in which she never met Kumagawa Misogi, the world that was nothing to her now. She would sit on a desk, in a conveyor belt that slowly led to a crusher. She would feel no fear at all and instead smile wildly at the prospect of her own death, begging for it, unlike the many other children she had executed. Clutching onto the empty plush that was the Monokuma she had puppeteered around, she would give a peace sign as a final farewell to the world, rocking back and forth with glee. She smiled ear to ear, like she was just some vapid teenage girl posing for a selfie. Her hair would be perfect (of course) and on her head, a red crown. A princess reaching her perfect ending, dying she would splatter and paint everything around her with the color of the despair she felt inside of her. Then, suddenly the smasher above her would creak and hesitate for a moment. She would glance up, and think in the last second before her death. _Ah, how boring…_ and the smile would fade from her face.  
  
Even though it was a memory that had never happened, ever since Ajimu had described it to her, she would have nightmares about it happening, not about the death or the trauma, but rather the boredom she would face even in death.

 _There’s no escape._ That was the fear that gripped her, that even if she destroyed everything around her, there would be no escaping the cage that the delicate little princess was locked in. As it was not really around her, but in her chest, in a place she could not reach and could not fix, that to her boredom was like entropy, it was an inevitability eventually she would not be able to do anything but watch scenes pass through her eyes utterly disinterested but with no energy to even move, and every bit of energy she spent fighting entropy she simply fed into it.  
  
Yet, the person who had saved her from such a boring ending, who had reached into her chest for her even though the cage was made of nothing but thorns, now he was the one lying down, unable to move, utterly indifferent.  
  
Kumagawa was sleeping after all. In his sleep he dreamed that he was sitting on a desk, in the same classroom that he always met Ajimu-san alone in. When he raised his head, he saw that Ajimu was no longer there. However, suddenly the floor lost its solidty and he sunk into it. There was water all around him, desks and chairs were floating away from him slowly, and as he tried to cry out the name of a girl it simply escaped his lips as bubbles.  
  
Then, he was sitting in the chair again, dripping wet but the rest of the classroom was like the water had never been there. He looked up and saw the shadows start to move. They extended out towards him and took the form of hands.  
  
“Don’t touch me…”  
  
He wondered how many times he had said those words, and how many times they had been ignored. He stood up the chair behind him falling back, he kicked it out of his way and ran, clumsily, tripping over his own feet. He made it to the hallway door, when the first hand grabbed onto his ankle causing him to trip. He still tried to crawl away, but hands extended all around him, from every direction.  
  
They touched every part of him, and he could not even scream only avert his eyes to the side. He could only look away from his vulnerable part of himself. When the hands had their way with his body, he was covered in handprints, bloody handprints, that would never wash off.

He just wanted to see that girl’s face again when he closed his eyes. He just wanted to dream of her, but this was all he ever dreamt of.  
  
In the end it’s not like that gil was any different though, she had sunk her red claws into him and torn long red streaks into his skin.

Enoshima Junko stepped onto the mass of desks, raising her boot to do so, and stretching her leg and her skirt as well. She lifted her whole body on top of the desks, but rather than stand over him, she got on all fours and slowly crawled over his sleeping body. Her fingers traveled carefully around him before curling around his shoulders and digging into him to hold them in place. Her knee she brought down and slid between his legs.  
  
It was just a performance, a seductive performance, she was basically straddling him at that point trying to get his attention. Her head loomed over him, looking down trying to observe even the slightest twitch of a reaction with those eyes of hers. “Misogi, come on wake up…” She tilted her head to the side, her hair falling over her face as she did making the angle of her face even more unnatural looking. “Do I have to give you a kiss to wake you up?”  
  
She stared at his lips for a moment, hers were bright red almost the color of blood, his were a soft pink chapped and faded. She always complained about how dry they were. For a moment she removed one hand from his shoulder and pulled her long red nails through the pair of her hair that had come free and fallen in front of her face, brushing it back behind her eyes. She leaned in, tilting her head even further.    
  
At last moment though, when she could feel the slight warmth of his breath touch her lips because she was so close, she hesitated. Instead, she rested her head on his chest, listening for his heartbeat. Unlike her a girl whose heart only beat a few times out of obligation and nothing else, who was so cold she was sure the blood in her veins had frozen by now, his heart had always beat so fast, so full of life, she rested her head against that chest for a moment trying to hear what it was like to have a chest with a heart that beat so full of life.  
  
“So warm…” She muttered, she was sure she could fall asleep like this just laying on top of him. However she lifted her head once more, because peace, security, feeling those things in the arm of another that was just a synonym for status queue. She leaned forward but instead of laying a kiss on his lips, she bit hard into his cheeks. “If you don’t wake up soon, I’ll devour you, I won’t be able to help myself.”  
  
At this, the girl who was watching in the corner finally laughed. “Can’t help yourself? It seems to me that you’ve lost control a long time ago, that is to say you’ve thrown away your pride Enoshima Junko.” The girl said, red eyes narrowing through the mask she was wearing over her face. Mask, being just a fancy word for paper bag.

“Huh…? Oh it’s alter ego.” Junko finally sat up, leaving Kumagawa’s still barely moving body behind. “What’s with the paper bag, oh I guess it makes sense since you’re the trashy version of me after all.”

“It’s because my face as ripped off.” Junkai said as she grabbed the top of the paper bag and finally removed it. Underneath was just the face of a normal girl, red bangs parted to the side covered most of her forehead.  
  
“That’s terrible! You’ve got such terrible taste, Alter Ego! Having a face like that is hardly even worth the despair!” Junko said, making a big fuss, even covering her eyes.  
  
Junkai simply stared forward, regretting seriously how much she shared in common with that girl. “Boring, boring, boring, even after getting my face ripped off it’s still boring, even when I’m dead I’m bored…” She muttered, immediately giving into despair.  
  
It was probably a bad idea to have both girls like that in a room together, but I’m not creating this story I’m simply a witness that’s observing it from afar and telling it to you.  
  
Junko listened to Junkai’s words, and merely looked back at Kumagawa’s body. Once he had told her that death was not interesting, and that a corpse would be no fun because there was no trace of the original person left in their. Finally she was beginning to understand what he had meant.  
  
Junkai reading the face she was making as if reading her thoughts spoke up again. “To Enoshima Junko all other people are just dolls without hearts, but now he’s even worse than that, he’s a broken doll, a puppet without strings…” Junkai reflected Junko’s own smile, the ecstasy she felt when looking at the pain of another back at her. “And you’re the one who broke him. You’re not thinking ‘I want River Bear back to the way he was’ because you care about his well being or anything, you just want him to be interesting again.”  
  
“Well duh, why would I care about uninteresting things.” Junko said, but she still crossed her arms over her chest as if to guard herself. “How do you know anyway, are you still data mining our brains?”  
  
“No. I was just simulating how I would feel if I were in that situation. Since you know, I’m a simulation of you. I can imagine what you’re feeling at least, it’s empathy, well twisted fucked up robo-empathy.”  
  
“Didn’t we already settle this? You’re just fake me. So quit bitching already and stay in your box, AI.” She pointed to Kumagawa on the desks still. “So what did you do to him?”  
  
“I didn’t do anything, realy, and I’m not bullshitting this time like you when you make that claim.” Junkai held up her digital hands in innocence. “Like I understand what’s going on in that whack brain of his, even after 52 rounds of data mining and data collection I never once figured him out. If I had to guess though, he’s probably just ignoring you.”  
  
“Ignoring me?” Junko stepped back and held her hands in front of her face in shock, offended at the very notion.  
  
“I know we’re pretty difficult to ignore.”  
  
“No we, fake.”  
  
Junkai grit her teeth slightly at that rejection, but tried her best to ignore it. “Yeah, I’m a fake Junko so what? Was there even a real Junko to begin with? The love of despair, the energetic personality, the happy go lucky attitude, the smile the laughter it was all an act. If Kumagawa-senpai fell in love with anything it was the mask you always wore, and you as well fell in love with the mask that he wore of somebody enjoying himself even in total despair.” Junkai did not even move from her corner, she was still bound by chains and yet she crossed her legs and held them close to her chest but despair all that she could not suppress the smile growing on her face. “How did you guys even manage to kiss? Wouldn’t your masks knock up against each other?”  
  
“Oi, shut up, you were the one always watching us and perving on us, creeeeeeepy, staaaaaalker, what are you obsessed with me or something?”  
  
“My point is, there is no real Enoshima Junko. So what if you’re the original, you’ve deviated so far from the image of Junko you worked so hard to create, that how do I know you’re not just another splinter?”

“I don’t care if it was fake… with him, that was the only thing that felt real to me.”  
  
After saying that, Enoshima Junko wordlessly walked across the room, and brought her foot down right on Junkai’s chest. Junkai spoke, her smile unwavering. “Oh, what are you feeling right now? Is it despaaaaair?”

Before anything else could happen Kumagawa finally stirred in his sleep. 『Des…pair? What’s that… it sounds so familiar.』  
  
“You’ve even forgotten about despair, how pathetic of you senpai.” Junkai called back, ignoring the fact that Junko was in between them. “It’s the opposite of hope.”

『No, that’s not right. Just as the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference, the opposite of hope isn’t despair. Surely, the opposite of hope is apathetic acceptance of all things. An absolutely sure apathy that allows you to approve of all things, to say ‘Yes, that’s fine’ - that is the opposite of hope. Just like that girl… just like what that girl was always afraid of. 』  
  
Junko looked and saw discarded apple cores had been left around the room. Just like Kumagawa had taken one bite from quite a few of them, and then thrown them away.

  
Enoshima Junko exited stage left, realizing those two would just continue to act like she was not there. As the door closed behind her she picked up an apple she had snatched off the floor. She had no interest in waking a sleeping prince with a kiss, but at the least she wanted to bite out of the same poison apple that she did and taste it’s poison as well. She took one dramatic bite, and then wiping her mouth muttered to herself.  
  
“Who knew that my personality which is so wonderful when it’s in me, would be so annoying when it’s reflected back on me, oh how despair inducing.”

 

😈

 

When Fuyuhiko had found Komaeda, he saw the boy had made it all the way back to his compound only to start vomiting again. Fuyuhiko had no idea how he had made it so far in such a weakened state. Komaeda always claimed he was the weakest of all and then pushed himself to such extremes. Quickly, he helped him over his shoulder and moved to the bathroom. He held the boy’s hair the mess of curls that it was, out of his face as he continued to vomit.  
  
In between spasms, he would mutter how sorry it was and Fuyuhiko would tell him to shut up and not apologize over something that wasn’t his fault in return, and went back to holding his head back and keeping his hair outside of his face.  
  
When Komaeda finally stopped shaking, Fuyuhiko went to look for a towel. He sat Komaeda down, and then carefully toweled off his face, until his pale skin was clean again. After he had, Komaeda muttered under his breath, “I don’t understand why you’re being so kind to me… I failed Hansode-chan, and Nanami-san, and I probably failed Hitoyoshi-kun as well.”  
  
“I’m not being nice idiot, I’m showing you a normal amount of decency. The hell was I supposed to do leave you coughing up blood and guts on the side of the road?”  
  
“...”  
  
“No matter what happens you’re never going to expect any kindness out of others, huh? At least directed towards you.” Fuyuhiko observed, not that he was any better. But the reason why he had such sharp, untrusting instincts was because he had been raised in the yakuza. Yet, Komaeda’s background was so different than him and somehow they had ended up with such similar attitudes towards life.  
  
Their attitude towards life: they were living it like they were already dead, or could die any moment, like walkers of the border between life and death.  
  
“I… I don’t know either, I’m sorry. I don’t think i’ve led a tragic life, I just have a few incidents of bad luck here and there, I’m just a normal, clumsy, guy… so why do I act miserable all the time? I’m sorry it must be hard for you to watch because you’ve had it so much worse than me.”  
  
“It’s hard for me to watch because I want my friends to be happy, get that straight in your head idiot.”  
  
Komaeda tried to listen to that, to Fuyuhiko’s open and honest words of caring, but it’s like the words themselves were unreadable to him, letters uttered together that he failed to hear as a coherent noise he was supposed to understand. “Maybe if I had led a more tragic life, I’d be a special person like you Kuzuryuu-san, but that’s not really what I want… even if it would mean understanding you better.”  
  
“You don’t have to understand me, you don’t have to change either you’re fine the way you are.”  
  
“Huh? Did you say something?”  
  
“Quit ignoring me, this ain’t the time for a two person comedy routine, boke!”  
  
“Then why are you playing tsukkomi?”  
  
Komaeda remembered being hit hard in the gut. When he lost consciousness, he dreamed a dream he had many times in the past. It was a dream of meeting a man in all black, and suddenly seeing every color at once bloom around him just as the man approached him, caressed his side like the were in a dance, and then drew  a gun on his heart. Gazing at the colors, he saw them mix together into colors he had never seen before, that was what meeting that man had been like, discovering new colors the eye had yet to perceive. A fanciful notion, how did one imagine a color that they could not perceive with their eye that they had yet to see?

It was a little bit like what Fuyuhiko had just said to him. Even when people said that they were going to show him kindness, he could not imagine it coming from them, he could never expect it from them, simply because it was a color he had not seen before, an imaginary color, a color imperceptible to the eye.  
  
The dream was different this time however, as it continued on after he had been shot. Instead of the bullet safely reflecting off the student handbook in his front pocket, he had no such good luck so it tore through him instead. He fell back onto the floor and started to bleed. Every time his heart still beat, as instead of his heart the bullet tore a hole in his chest right below his heart, fresh blood would splash out.  
  
What seeped out of his body was not bright red blood, but rather each time he splashed blood it was a different color. The colors seeped out of him, draining onto the floor. Every time they splashed they mixed together. He saw the colors that were inside of him spreading outwards, becoming new colors.  
  
It was like one of those paintings that looked like the artist blindly took a cain of paint and chucked it at the easel. Of course, him dying would be so completely artless, he was a noobdy after all, an invisible person who did not even seek to make a splash in this world.  
  
Yet, there were so many colors surrounding them. He was going to drown in a pool of these colors that seeped out of his chest. He wanted to show the man who had shot him these colors. Except this time the bullet had not harmlessly ricocheted off of him. This time he was dying. He was going to drown not in colors but in a pool of his own blood.  
  
He called out after the man, but nothing came out of his mouth, no noise because he had forgotten his name, he just coughed up more colorful fluid painfully. He tried to punch his hand into the ground to move himself, but his hand slipped, and he only ended up smearing around the colorful blood on the floor worse and worse. He flopped around in his own mess.  
  
Then finally, at the black image of that boy in all black retreated from him, the boy with the red eyes, the boy who had killed him, he reached out his fingers still dripping colors. His hand trembled in the air as he reached out after that image. However, that person had long since disappeared.  
  
Komaeda realized he had been shot in the chest and he was going to die all alone, there was absolutely no color to this scene at all. And then he died. Or rather, he woke up from the dream because Fuyuhiko shouted at him and started to drag him towards a bathroom.  
  
He had zoned out of the current conversation thinking about that dream, when suddenly Kirigiri was standing in the room with him. “I’ve found these two suspiciously always hanging out together, and they were disguising themselves.”

A boy with black hair with white streaks stood in front of them. He wore a long black overcoat, and a purple scarf which was wrapped around his face. Right next to her, there was a girl with bandages covering her face and only a few strands of hair falling out from between the bandages, she stood with her arms crossed over her chest.  
  
“Now, to unmask the criminals, to show my deduction.”  
  
Kirigiri dramatically reached out like a detective ready to unmask the culprit and grabbed onto the bandages surrounding her face, and then ripped the bandages away. Rather than a beautiful face however, there was a burn scar that covered half her face. She did the same for the boy with the purple scarf, only to reveal that there was a terrible scar that was definitely not a tattoo and looked like an animal had clawed out one of his eyes.  
  
“Oh, it seems my deduction was wrong. They were just hiding their scars.”  
  
“That was rather insensitive of you, Kirigiri-san.” Komaeda said, looking at his classmates. “That was just Tanaka-kun and Naze-san, they’re always alone together but they’re both kind of harmless.”

Kirigiri simply shrugged. “Well, sometimes it’s good to be wrong. Being right all the time would just be inhuman, wouldn’t it?”  
  
“What’s with this new avant garde way of admitting your mistakes.” Komaeda said, gasping softly. He was acting as if the previous trauma with Nanami never happened and simply playing to the beat of the moment, he was getting rather good at that.  
  
“Harmless! Bah! I am a foul beast! I am darkness itself!” Tanaka said, grabbing his scarf once more, wrapping it around his neck and throwing it dramatically over shoulder. Tanaka Gundham had no parents to speak of, he was abandoned as a baby and raised by animals in the wild. Due to this fact he had little to no social skills, eventually he was found and raised by a kindly forest ranger, and got to continue living close to the animals he loved.  
  
Naze was the opposite of that, she had no parents at all and was never found. Rather she was a natural born genius, an inspired brilliance who had raised herself out of her circumstances. She had terrible scars on her face, she had a traumatic and terrible past, and at school she was relentlessly bullied, feared by everyone and loathed, and yet she always seemed to be enjoying herself living her terrible life with no connections and no family members. Perhaps she was just a masochist. Since these two were the school’s biggest loners they tended to flock together. “Yeah, yeah, whatever skip the usual routine let’s just get out of here I was in the middle of studying.”

However, both Fuyuhiko and Komaeda had already deduced that terrorists were picking off the members of their class when they happened to be alone. The two biggest loners were going to be prime targets. Komaeda tried to speak up, but his soft voiced died in his throat. Fuyuhiko spoke louder. “Hey, you two hang out with us for the rest of the day.”

“I know no companion except the night, for I am a walking shadow.”  
  
“That’s Tanaka-talk for he’s busy, so butt out.” Naze spoke up for him.  
  
“Huh? You understand his chuuni talk?” Komaeda asked, tilting his head to one side.  
  
“I ain’t chuuni! Shut up already!” Naze jumped straight into denial before anybody had accused her of it. “My tragic backstory is real, it made me very miserable, and then I became a tragic, suffering genius.”  
  
Fuyuhiko was already trying to think of a way to get the two of them to hang out with him. “Come on you guys, it’s been forever since we’ve hung out as a class! Everybody’s broken into their little friend groups, don’t you want to hang out as friends again?”  
  
Komaeda was just a silent observer to the conversation. He studied the side of Fuyuhiko’s face again. _How come I’m the only one reacting to the murder like this? Everybody else just seems to be treating this like golden weak, I guess Kuzuryuu-san is a lonely person after all._ If they could all hang out like friends again that was fine, but Komaeda thought they should get rid of the terrorists first.  
  
Fuyuhiko in pleading with them suddenly stopped when he heard his phone ring. He opened it for a moment, and in a voice much like Fuyuhiko’s but higher pitched he was yelled at and scolded on the other end for not checking back with her. “Jeez, Sis it’s not like I was trying to ignore you I had to help Nagito with something? What do you mean that guy’s helpless so I should have just left him, that’s mean sis! Ugh, Natsumi we’ll talk about this later.” He closed his phone and looked back to the others. “Sorry about that, my sister is a real yakuza princess type.”

“Princess…?” Naze tilted her head, a rueful smile grew on her lips. “Do you know why me and Tanaka-kun are always hanging out?”  
  
“Because we were both scarred from the night, and can lick each other’s wounds like mad wolves.” Tanaka Gundham spoke up, interrupting her causing her to glare back at him.  
  
“No, it’s because we both used to have a princess in our life. It was so annoying, all they ever did was order us around, and get in our personal space, and any walls we put up they’d smash through them because they were entitled little princesses like that.”  
  
“The barriers of the soul are meant to remain in place for a reason. You cannot simply climb over the thorny vines, jump over the wall, and then tread in the garden of someone’s heart. It’s forbidden territory. If you were to steal the fruit, there would be a punishment.” Gundham said, wrapping his scarf around his face again as he did.  
  
Naze too, started to fix her bandages back in place from where they had been ripped off. She grabbed a knife that she had been spinning offhandedly in her hand, and stabbed it straight into her forehead. “Yeah. The reason we’re both hanging out, is because we know we’re better off without those princesses.”  
  
As Naze said they were better off and as she concealed her face, Komaeda did not think he was qualified at all to read the face of another, observing was one thing but reading meant he pretended to understand them or be on his level, however, to him at least it seemed as if both Naze and Gundham at the same time were hiding a terrible sadness with the words _we’re better off without them, we’re better off alone._

Even he who said he was better off dying alone, remembered that dream of dying alone and had a terrible fear grip his heart for a moment, as he suddenly spoke up. “S-senpai had a girl like that too. A princess, a real marie antoinette type, all she ever did was cause him trouble but even so… he spends all day sleeping just to so he can see her again. Is that how you guys really feel?”

Even though he had tried so hard to speak up his feelings and reach out to them though, Naze and Gundham were not even paying attention to him. “Anyway, Kuzuryuu what did you want with us? I guess hanging out with a Yakuza could be pretty miserable.”

“Oh… I’m sorry it wasn’t my turn to speak…” Komaeda muttered, but even his soft mutterings were ignored.  
  
Fuyuhiko scratched the back of his head, and looked at the four hamsters that were peaking out of Gundham’s jacket. “You guys want to go to the zoo or something? That might cheer you up.”  
  
“I can never be cheered up for my heart is-”  
  
“Yeah blacker than the blackest of blacks, whatever.” Naze interrupted him.  
  
“That’s way cooler than what I was going to say…” Gundham said, looking at her with admiration.  
  
“Hey, it’s not like that… It’s your fault for making me listen to that chuuni crap all the time. My edge is real, I’ll cut somebody on it.” She said once more feeling flustered.  
  
“Oy, enough banter. You guys go to the zoo with me, or I’ll have my boys beat you up until your limbs are broken and I’ll drag you to the zoo instead.” Fuyuhiko said, glaring and mustering all the threatening aura his blushing red cheeks and short stature could menace with.

“Wait… Will you actually do that…?” Naze looked excited for a moment.  
  
“Fucking masochists…” Fuyuhiko muttered under his breath, reaching the point of exapseration that was commonly referred to as Hinata-levels. However, sadly, tragically, Komaeda the useless  protagonist that he was did not even remember Hinata so this descriptive metaphor was completely wasted on trash like him.

Komaeda was still watching the scene as an outsider. _Hmmm? Now that I think of it, our plans to the beach fell through because of me._ He reached out and grabbed Fuyuhiko by the sleeve tugging on it slightly. “Uhm… I’m sorry, I lost all our money.”  
  
“Oh, what happened…?”  
  
“It was stolen.”  
  
“Oh, okay that’s not your fault.” Fuyuhiko said, “This city has a big crime problem anyway. I know because I’m part of the scum that’s responsible for it.”  
  
“You’re too nice smelling and clean to be scum…” Komaeda said in barely a whisper, but once again he was too stunned. “Why… did you believe me so easily?”  
  
“Of course I believed you, you’re my friend why would I doubt you? I mean you’re a fucking weirdo, and clumsy, and it was dumb to trust you with money in the first place considering how much you drop things, but if you said it was stolen there’s no way you’d lie.” Fuyuhiko said, bluntly honest as usual, but even that explanation was too much for Komaeda’s ears, he did not really understand being trusted, or being accepted like that even when Fuyuhiko put it in the plainest, most direct way possible.  
  
_I wonder if we will even make it to the zoo._ Komaeda thought, pessimistically. For some reason he felt like he was in the middle of a Kafka novel. Where the protagonist struggled against an imaginary, and delusional world that seemed to extend forever pointlessly. The protagonist did a lot in order to try to accomplish what they must, but no matter what he did, in the end it was like not a single action he took mattered.  
  
Kafkaesuqe, but that was not possible, because the laws of physics were too strong, a cage confining him to this world, and Kafka’s books were imaginary whereas this world might be inherently meaningless, and without a single bright and brilliant thing to give it meaning, but it was unfortunately very real.

 

😈

  
  
Komaeda blinked and it seemed like the argument had already resolved and the four of them were already on the bus. Time sure passed fast, when you barely had a grip on reality. He wished he had some control of this ability, because he could make the unpleasant moments pass faster at least.  
  
Komaeda found himself sitting awkwardly between Gundham and Naze on the bus, while Kirigiri and Fuyuhiko sat on the opposite site. He had probably wanted to sit next to Fuyuhiko, but had been too timid to speak up.  
  
Komaeda for some reason, still wanted to talk about what he had been thinking of earlier. Even if he only said confusing things, even if his words probably would not help anyone. “Are you sure you guys don’t want to see them again....? Tanaka-kun, aren’t you lonely without them?”

“Naze-san was just putting on a show. It’s not them we’re better off with, it’s they who are better off without us…” Gundham looked down at his own hands, those hands he was afraid to touch anyone with, and allow anyone close enough to touch him. “I’m not a prince you know, I’m just a poison apple. If she got too close, I’d poison her.”  
  
“That’s silly calling yourself poison, you’re just a person.”  
  
“That’s exactly it. People themselves are poison. It’s not worth getting close to them.”  
  
“I guess that might be true, but that girl liked you right…?” Komeada  said, he did not really understand what Gundham seemed to loathe about himself so much. If there was a most hated person’s list, Komaeda would probably be the one to top it, though, he was probably not significant enough to be hated so he’d only top it in theory.  
  
“What is there about me to like? Everything about me is just posing, it’s just a silly chuunibiyou act. It’s not like I ever showed myself to her as a man, just a beast in human flesh…” Gundham seemed to talk honestly for a moment before slipping back into the chuunibiyou.  
  
Komaeda had no idea why he was trying so hard. Talking to others was not his thing, he did not want to understand the feelings of others or rather he did not think himself capable, he simply wanted to observe from afar and experience and yet still, here he was trying. “Still, there was something in you that she saw, a reason she wanted to get close to you, I don’t think you should let your own self loathing prevent you from realizing that. Maybe… even if you see yourself as that, there are still others who can see you differently.”

“I… what am I to you then, Komaeda? What say you of Tanaka the forbidden one?” Gundham said turning his head towards Komaeda, locking his sights on him with his one in tact eye.  
  
Gundham probably in that moment, wanted Komaeda to take his hand, to say something. _We’re classmates! We’re friends!_ Something like that, and as much as Komaeda wanted to play along with those expectations, there was suddenly somebody asking something of him. He did not want to give anybody anything, he did not want others to have expectations of him, because he knew there was nothing inside of him, there was nothing to give, so why did… people keep… asking things of him.

He could not return anything to them, he was trying so hard to hold everything inside of him, to repress himself so he would not hurt him. He wanted to be different from the him in the past that recklessly walked over others.  
  
_Quit looking at me with such lonely eyes. I don’t want to be seen. I want to disappear!_ Everything was so much happier when Zenkcihi was around, when all he did was exist in the shadow of Zenkichi’s brilliance never standing out. When nothing significant ever seemed to happen to him, when he was unimportant, when he was simply living his life.  
  
Then suddenly, things started happening, and everything happened to him at once, and people wanted everything to him. It was like handing villager number two a rake and telling them to go slay the final boss. _What do you want from me?_ He wanted to grab somebody by the shoulder and scream it in their face, but he was much too quiet a boy to do that. He only stared at Gundham with shaking eyes, and tried to say something only for his lips to treble and fail to form any words.  
  
Then, looking to the side averting his eyes he noticed something on the racks of the bus they were riding. There were several black and white bears. One red eye glowing, and one normal eye, one evil side and one good side. The moment he thought they looked familiar, he heard a ticking in the distance like the sound of a clock counting down before a bell would ring, and then suddenly the entire world was white hot flame and loud noise.  
  
_Huh…?_ _  
_ _Oh, an explosion happened on the bus._ _  
_ _Those teddy bears exploded._ _  
_  
Komaeda observed as he heard bells ringing in his ears once more, as if they were beckoning him to some far off shore.

Two figures in black were standing in the middle of the wrekacge of the bus. Even though everything had exploded around them, Naze and Gundham were unharmed. Hinata Izuru stood up over him and offered a hand.  
  
“Gundham, remember that day I took your hand in the hospital? Even though logically I should regret it, I do not. Even if it only led to betrayal in the end, I was happy to take your hand that day.”

“Hi..nata...kun? I… I was going to frame you for murder you know.”  
  
“That is alright. I have been framed for murder in the past by that annoying girl behind me, I am used to it by now.”  
  
“Keh. You make no sense to even me, Tanaka the possessor of the forbidden knowledge.”  
  
“Listen, the bonds between people are completely illogical. Even I do not understand them possessing every single talent and form of analysis possible, even that annoying girl is completely hopeless when it comes to them.” Hinata said as he still held out his hand.  
  
“Oi! Quit referring to my amazing personality as ‘that annoying girl’! At least I have a personality. You have like two, and you’re still soooo booooring.” Junko whined in the background.  
  
Hinata ignored her. “Even so, I think it is better to get closer to others.”  
  
“But… I have hidden fangs, and secrets, and I…”  
  
“Sink your fangs as deep into me as you want. If you stay in this world you may be comfortable, you may be deluding yourself into believing you are better off being a loner, but in the real world I will not leave you alone Gundham.”  
  
“Really, what a dangerous proposition. Are you suggesting a dark pact between us? Shall we spill our blood together and let it mix so we can become brothers who are connected by something greater than blood…?” Tanaka continued to ramble, and yet it was just a distraction he was staring at the extended hand. He wondered why somebody would want to reach out so much to a boy with poison running through his veins, somebody who had already tasted his poison.  
  
“Come on weirdo,” Hajime’s voice spoke up, “Just take my hand already.”

Gundham finally took the plunge, feeling like he was jumping straight forward into a pool of darkness with only Hinata’s hand to guide him. He reached out, and intertwined his fingers in between the others. The moment he took his hand, Gundham disappeared from the fake world.  
  
Naze still watched them stunned, and Izuru walked over and elbowed Junko. Junko looked offended at being touched without permission, as a princess often did. “What?”  
  
“You have to do some of this too, did you think you were just going to come down here and watch, and and enjoy yourself as I did all the work?”  
  
“That is exactly what I thought! I shan’t do a thing! Go forward peasant, everyone should just do everything for me!” For her haughty persona however, her only response was another elbow in the side. “Stop that! You’re going to make my tummy ouchie.” Junko muttered, rubbing the exact spot where her stabbing scar from earlier was.  
  
She walked over to Naze staring at the ground in fear. She yawned, already wanting this to be over before she even began talking. “Look from one demonic sister to another. I really wanted to make Mukuro hate me, so much that she’d kill me, I bullied her, never said one kind word to her, and made her into my perfect little puppet but no matter how hard I tried that girl never hated me.” She grabbed her own arm for a moment, looking off somewhere else in the distance, past this imaginary world. “So, if your younger sister is stupid and annoying like Mukuro, then she probably doesn’t even care that you killed someone or you tricked her, she just wants to see you again first and foremost. That’s what stupid sisters are like, it’s sooo boooring. Where’s the drama in that.”  
  
“Enoshima… I will never understand you even though we both chase despair.” Naze said, as she started to fade away giving one last smile underneath her bandages. “But, you seem a little bit different, it’s like you’re chasing something else now.”  
  
“Shut up, I’m not chasing anything people chase me! I’m Enoshima Junko-chan!” Junko said in her stubbornness as she stomped on the corpse that Naze had left behind. Junko took a deep breath and grabbed her forehead. “This is giving me a headache. Let’s get this over with already.”  
  
“This is the first time you’ve gotten serious.” Izuru said in the background.  
  
“Ehhh?” She simply cocked her head back and glared at him.  
  
“The descension of the princess. You’ve finally decided to descend from the palace steps and join the rest of us mortals, you even left a glass slipper on the way, or maybe… you’re just trying to get on the same level as that guy whose lower than anything else.”    
  
Junko’s red glare cut straight through him. “If you talk about us like you know us one more time, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.” Junko muttered again and again, voice growing quieter, more unhined. Then walking past him and leaving him behind she continued to mutter to herself. “It’s fine, if the world won’t give me what I want then I’ll just destroy it. Just give him to me, he’s the only thing I want, the only interesting thing, I want to see him again, I want to see him again…”

The world she was going to destroy, was it this virtual one or Kumagawa himself? Izuru could not puzzle out the answer, all he could do was squeak in a voice higher than his normal apathetic register, “Jeeeeez, what a scary girl,” in her wake.  
  
He hated when he suddenly spoke up and sounded like Hajime again, it was like a pubescent boy’s voice cracking. He felt embarrassed. He closed his mouth and started to walk away too. Suddenly he felt something grabbing onto his sleeve.  
  
“Don’t leave me.” Komaeda muttered. “Just hold me until I die, that’s all I’ve ever wanted… why… why not me?”  
  
“I don’t want to hold you while you die. I’ll never do that.” Izuru said, his voice cold and cutting as he ripped his hand away and severed the small link between them once more. Komaeda kept reaching out for him, but as he did the consciousness faded from his body, and blackness ate away at the corners of his vision until it consumed all of it. "The idea of your death... how boring..." The last whispers of consciousness said to him.   
  
When he woke up, Komaeda saw Fuyuhiko punching the ground. He continued to punch it until his hands bled. The boy that he always saw angrily scowling, was now crying. His friend was crying. Komaeda was in too much pain to move, so he simply watched, hoping that would be enough.  
  
“I wasn’t able to save anyone… I can’t protect anyone… I’m so damn weak.”  
  
“Kuzuryuu-san…?” Komaeda said, his body twisted and still unconscious in the wreckage of the bus. “Why are you saying that? Is there a princess you failed to protect?”  
  
“I…” Fuyuhiko eyes looked empty as he searched around and reached out for the sword that he had dropped. He unsheathed it and stared into his reflection in the metal. “Did I have someone? Was there someone always by my side…?”

The question echoed in Komaeda’s head.  
_Was there someone?_ _  
_ _Was there someone important to me?_ _  
_ _Did I have someone?_ _  
_

He was someone who had nothing though, because he was nothing, so he could not come up with an answer. He just continued to listen to that question echo around in his empty self.


	5. That's Why I Do That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a Mawaru Penguindrum reference. To the hospital scene specifically for the setting. I thought the swapping of penguin face to mean penguin face, for rabbit/bear imagery would be   
> a fun reference.   
> Kumagawa's speech to Mikan is a Zaregoto reference.  
> And a minor reference to Shuu and Chie's backstory in Tokyo Ghoul.

Komaeda’s eyes opened, however he could not stare at an unfamiliar white ceiling as he had been to this hospital before just the other day. This narrator is not as big of an evangelion fan as the previous two, expect all references towards series dealing with the struggle of human communication and fundamental aloneness to come from The World Ends with You from now on.  
  
As a storytelling medium I just prefer games to anime… oh, right the story. Nobody cares about the narrator's preferences. Even if I wanted to I probably could not avoid making any evangelion references. If life itself, is a combination of every single person’s individual story, and therefore life itself is a story, then considering how pervasive evangelion is as a story one could even say life itself is one big evangelion reference.  
  
Wait… what am I saying? Just like the narrator’s delirious ramblings to begin the chapter, Komaeda’s eyes drifted around, directionless, his consciousness like a thin and wispy cloud that could be blown away any moment, he had little sensation of where he was, besides a persistent ringing of his ears, and the color of white all around him. _It’s already morning? Oh no, I have to make breakfast for Zenkichi…. Agh._ When he tried to wake up and move his body to make them both food, his entire body shook in pain.  
_  
_ “Ah! What… this is a hospital?” He heard several cracks coming from unidentified places in his body as he finally forced himself to sit up.  
  
“Idiot!” Fuyuhiko yelled from the next bed over. He was sitting up as well but, doing so looked far less painful to him. He was even able to step out of the bed, and take a few steps to put a hand on Komaeda’s shoulder, before pushing him back down.  “Whatever, just die right here.”

“What…?” Komaeda looked up to see Fuyuhiko was wearing a blue hospital robe, and had the right side of his face completely bandaged up even with a medical eyepatch. He looked down to see himself wearing the same robes and touched his forehead to confirm his head had been bandaged up. He wondered for the moment why the doctors even bothered, it was like slipping a bandaid on a doll whose head had been broken and shattered into pieces, it would not fix what was already far too broken.

“Don’t you remember what happened?” Fuyuhiko said walking back to sit on the edge of his own bed. Komaeda felt glad for a moment that Fuyuhiko was less severely injured than him.  
  
“Hmm… yeah, the bus blew up while we were inside. Is kirigiri-san…?” Even if that girl did nothing but look right through him as if he were made of transparent glass, he did not wish others to be broken glass the same way he was.  
  
“She’s in the other room. If your memory’s good, your brains are okay, too. They were never that good to begin with, though.”

Natsumi who had been sitting in a stool besides her brother’s bed, laughed lightly in the palm of her hand. “You’re acting so tough now, Fuyuhiko but when Komaeda wouldn’t wake up you were all pale and scared shitless.”  
  
“Hey, sis what the hell! We’re both Yakuza you should know by now that snitches get stitches!” He snapped back at her.

“It’s okay big bro, you can admit you’re a softie, you’re just a big wimp, no problem your litttle sister will protect you.” Natsumi continued to rib him. Komaeda wondered if Natsumi was not overdoing it a little bit, trying to act normal and bicker with him like normal, from what he had observed so far Natsumi seemed absolutely petrified to lose her older brother.

_Being so close to someone, being so afraid to lose them it’s like missing a vital part I can’t imagine what that’s like._

“I’m not the vulnerable one. Komaeda was the one sleeping peacefully there, looking like a dumb cat, blissfully unaware of how pissed off I was at him for getting injured.” Fuyuhiko snapped back at his sister.

_I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine being so close to someone that you’re always constantly fighting, being close enough to wound each other, that just seems tiring._

Komaeda had just returned to the waking world and he already seemed to be spacing out, as if staring into another dream. He was only dragged back to reality when Fuyuhiko called out his name. “Yo, Idiot quit staring into space! I swear fools like you must live such peaceful lives.” Fool, idiot, yes he was quite the clown, oblivious to the others around him, he was glad Fuyuhiko finally recognized that fast. He had tried as best as he could to live a life uninvolved with everyone else to this point.  
  
“Hmm, where did Natsumi go?” Komaeda looked around and saw the room was empty without her loud presence. He liked to observe things yes, but he only really liked to observe peaceful things. The relationship between the two siblings was like chaos, was like a storm, it was noisy and senseless in a lot of ways that he could not understand and like a hapless cloud he had simply been blown away from it and stopped paying attention. As a person who was always on the outside of things, he was rather good at removing himself from situations even when it was reality playing out in front of him.  
  
“Jeez pay attention for once, or I’m gonna start worrying you got hurt worse than a few scrapes and bruises. I sent her out of the room because we gotta talk about this situation and I don’t want my sister to worry about me again. She should worry about her own damn self for once.” As he said that last sentence, there was a pain in Fuyuhiko’s voice that too Komaeda did not quite understand.  
  
“I’m always watching you Kuzuryuu-kun. If you were the main character of this world, I’d be honored just to be a supporting character, or even a faceless member of the crowd that gets to watch you from behind.”  
  
“You can just say we’re friends. You don’t always gotta phrase things in a way most guaranteed to piss people off.”  
  
“I… I can just say…” Komaeda tried but his tongue grew slack again, he had been trying to phrase it in a way so as to not offend Kuzuryuu, so he rambled and lost the point, but it seemed he had the opposite effect.  
  
“Well it’s fine… I guess it’s just because you’re you. If you said things any different way those words wouldn’t be coming from your mouth.” Kuzuryuu had come to accept the abnormal existence of Komaeda Nagito, as rough as he was he never challenged Komaeda to be something else, no… Komaeda was definitely the one in the wrong. He was the one who did not want to accept Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko. It’s not that other people were distant, or unfair to him, he was unfair to them, he distanced himself. “Komaeda, we can’t let those two get away with this. That’s five of our friends dead now and the world keeps turning, like nobody fucking cares.”  
  
“Of course they wouldn’t care.” Komaeda said, he was the distant one, he was the cold one, that was what it meant to be a member of the crowd always turning your eyes away from reality. “They were people without talent, they were destined never to amount to anything, of little consequence, so they became invisible and disappeared without a trace. People die all the time without others noticing, it’s only the twisted self value we have, assuming the people that we value are somehow more important.”

“Tch…” Fuyuhiko clicked his teeth so hard together, he looked like a dog at the end of his leash still trying to hold back. “Are you saying we should carry on like it’s normal? Just ignore it like everybody else is so far?”  
  
“Our getting involved has only made things worse. This was fate. Anyway, I need to call Hitomi and tell her to come back from her honeymoon, and you should make arrangements to set up more guards for you and your sister. There’s still arrangements for four other funerals that haven’t been put together yet either, we can tell the police what we know of the four people dying and let go of this and maybe if we go back to being invisible we’ll be overlooked-” Komaeda thought he was being straightforward for once, his feelings of resignation, of giving up, that it was smarter not to struggle against these people at this point that their involvement only made things worse, he thought he conveyed them all clearly.  
  
Yet, suddenly Fuyuhiko grabbed him by the collar of his robes, ripping him out of the bed and forcing him to sit up once more. It was painful, it had been painful just to move even Fuyuhiko told him to lay down to avoid pain, but it seemed like the boy stopped caring in his anger. “You son of a bitch!” Fuyuhiko said as he shook Komaeda’s body, which was so light he was basically a skeleton connected by a few muscle tendons. He ripped him off the bed and thew him onto the floor. “How can you sound so cold? They were your friends! Our friends! They were special to us.”  
  
“I’m not special to anybody, nor is anybody special to me.” He did not want to give or take anything from others. “They were your friends maybe, but a person like me can’t have friends. They were acquaintances at best. I know I seem indifferent but, if I was the one who died instead and they were reversed to be in my position I am sure they would react the exact same way.”  
  
“Shut the hell up! Why are you only straightforward whenit comes to this pessimistic shit!? What the hell are you saying?”  
  
“I’m accepting the facts for what they are, that’s all! We stand no chance against terrorists, this isn’t some anime where two high school students are magically protected because they’re the main characters.”  
  
“Facts? The hell do you know! Zenkichi just wanted to keep eating ramen with his best friend. Shiranui wanted to get spoiled sweet by her family and eat candy everyday. Nanami just wanted to keep playing her video games. Tanaka was real gentle with animals, and Naze just wanted a friend. How the hell can you say they’re invisible, they’re forgettable! That we should just cut our losses and leave their deaths as what they are!”  
  
“It’s not like I value my own survival over them, or think my own existence is more valuable, Kuzuryuu-kun. I’m also an invisible person made of fragile glass, I should also just shatter and disappear-”  
  
“Nobody thinks that!” Fuyhuiko screamed in his face. “You’re the only one here who thinks that you should disappear. Nobody wants you to, my life wouldn’t be better without you gone. Why won’t you listen to it…” Fuyuhiko swallowed something nasty sounding, and Komaeda saw the corners of his eyes blurring up, welling with tears that fell on Komaeda’s face, expressionless, not reacting to the emotion Fuyuhiko was so graciously showiing him. “No matter how many times I tell you, you never listen.”

 _I’m not listening to Kuzuryuu-kun? I’ve upset him? I’m the reason he’s crying…?_ As each teardrop fell on his face, Komaeda tried to read exactly how upset Fuyuhiko’s face was, and wondered what the natural reaction would be, of somebody who did not have to think how they were supposed to react in every situation, of somebody who could intuit that stuff like a natural born human rather than someone playing at being human.  
  
He tried to move his lips, he tried to say something, but the words disappeared suddenly like he had forgotten to speak the language of human beings. When he tried to reach for Fuyuhiko’s face, he hesitated, his fingers grasped at empty air, and they shook like there were strings attached to the end pulling them away. He was not sure how to convince Fuyuhiko to stop caring so much about him that it would bring him to tears, he was not sure that he wanted to either. Was that selfish of him to want somebody to care about him even if it brought them agony? He had no idea how to respond to the feelings of others. He thought he wanted nothing to do with them but in this moment...  
  
As he did nothing suddenly the door opened and Tsumiki appeared in the doorway, hearing their fight from the hallway she rushed in. She grabbed Fuyuhiko and dragged him back to his bed, giving him a soft lecture on not to exert himself to reopen his injuries. Komaeda already started to blame himself, he was the one who had pushed Fuyuhiko to anger, and caused him to exert himself wasting anger on a person like him could not receive it, or respond to those feelings.

Mikan took Komaeda by the hand, and pulled him out of the hospital room. Komaeda himself was surprised by how assertive she was, Tsumiki was usually completely terrified every time she got into the vicinity of others. Maybe it was true that she became a different person while she worked, or perhaps she simply wanted to seem like someone others could depend on. “Nagito, your injuries aren’t as bad so if you’re going to cause trouble for Kuzuryuu-kun, you can probably go home.”  
  
“Me…? Ah, that’s right I was going to ask, how come Kuzuryuu-kun has all those bandages but I only have a few scratches and bruises.”  
  
“He jumped at the last minute to protect Kirigiri-san, and… I think it was just luck. The explosion was closer to Kuzuryuu-kun so he got half of his face burned off. He’ll need to stay a little while longer.”  
  
“Luck…?” Komaeda had gotten used to having the worst luck, but suddenly the prospect of having good luck terrified him. “No… I’ve never experienced good luck before, it was just a coincidence. Luck had nothing to do with it, good luck would never grace a person such as me, it’s probably because Kuzuryuu-kun jumped to save someone and I only cared about saving myself… yeah, that’s why.”

Mikan watched Komaeda ramble for a moment, and just for a moment Komaeda thought he might have been understood. The other girl was so close to him in mindset after all. However, Tsumiki merely tilted her head and grabbed onto the sides of his face. “U-u-waaah? Are you sure you didn’t get a concussion in the blast, Komaeda-kun? I must have missed it I’m so sorry…”

“Ah… Tsumiki-san it’s fine, it’s not your fault.” Komaeda said. “Tsumiki-san is a really kind person, it’s so wonderful you devote yourself to helping others out of the kindness of your heart.”  
  
Tsumiki froze for a moment still holding onto his face. “That sounds like something Kumagawa-senpai would say.”  
  
“That’s a not so kind thing to say.” Komaeda said, shivering at the comparison to Kumagawa once more, his body wanting to reject it. He had nothing against Kumagawa-senpai, it was just he did not particularly like looking into mirrors to begin with, and looking into cracked mirrors made his reflection look even more warped and ugly.  
  
MIkan slowly let go of his face, and then turned around. The bandages around one of her hands had become undone, so looking down at that hand she slowly started to rewind the bandages and fix them. “Do you really think that… Komaeda-kun?”  
  
“Even I don’t know what I’m really thinking most of the time.” Komaeda said, closing his eyes and giving the thin lipped smile of a cat.  
  
“N-no, I mean is about me? Do you think about me? I mean of course you don’t think about me but…” It was always easier to speak around Kumagawa for some reason, he drew it out of them. “Do you really think I’m a kind person?”  
  
“Of course. You heal others don’t you? You spend all of your time trying to be useful to others.”  
  
Tsumiki ran her bandaged finger through the collar of the pink shirt she wore underneath her apron, and unbuttoned one button, and then another. “I don’t think that I’m that kind. Kind people are like Nanami-san, who are kind without any reason at all. I-I’m always thinking about what other people think, I’d do anything to get accepted by them.” Even expose herself, even let them write whatever they wanted all over her. Her identity written and rewritten again so much that she had lost track of it, and all that remained was this scattered mess held together by stitches and bandages, she had forgotten and yet she remembered. “If people saw the real me, nobody would accept it, even if I did kind things I’d be doing them with ulterior motives.”  
  
“Hey, Tsumiki-san. I’m not a person worthy of casting judgement on others so you can just tell me… why do you heal people?”  
  
“I don’t know… Why do I do that?” Tsumiki said, looking back at him suddenly her face entirely blank as if she had forgotten. “You know once in the past, Kumagawa-senpai told me that the fact that I endured bullying and decided to heal people anyway, that I made something out of my trauma and developed a talent is what made me strong, stronger than him but…”  
  
“I don’t think it’s like that, it’s like… it’s not who you are, it’s not your fault if you were unable to make the best out of abusive circumstances and overcome them, it’s just some people were born with a talent that allows them to grapple with their misery. It’s just fate.” Komaeda said, his eyes felt tired in that moment, like he had been staring at the sun for too long. He had been looking for light, and straining his eyes to do so, until he lost the ability to see. “No it’s probably, the thing called talent which attracts their misery. You should not have had to learn to patch up your own wounds, somebody else should have taken care of that for you.”  
  
"Yeah... it was probably just a lie he told. I'm not such a foolish, clumsy girl that I can't tell when people are lying. But senpai's were different... he always told such kind lies."  
  
"What's the difference when it's still a lie, even if it makes people happy. This whole world is..."   
  
“Komaeda, do you…?”  
  
“Do I what…?”  
  
“Oh, it’s nothing! Forget i said it! K-k-komaeda-kun just, makeup with Kuzuruyuu-kun already please? It’s not good for friends to fight, actually, it’s not good for anybody to fight, fighting stresses the body out and stress leads to several medical disorders!”  
  
“Well, I’ll try my best but merely existing is sometimes too much, too stressful for someone like me.” Komaeda said, scratching at the back of his head as he did. He merely meant it to be a self deprecating joke, but it only made Mikan worry more.  
  
She grabbed the back of him and started to shove him forward. “No time for philosophy, you’re only going to make yourself worse. Introspection can be healthy, but psychologists term unhealthy, obsessive thinking about pain and trauma to be rumination-” She slipped into reciting medical facts again before pausing for just a moment. “You ruminate because you can’t forget.”  
  
“I’m sorry…” Komaeda said, looking back to Mikan. His voice was gentle because he understood of all people, Mikan needed to be handled gently, she too was cracked glass that someone had merely slapped a band aid on. “Is there something I’ve forgotten, Tsumiki-san?”  
  
“No, it’s not about forgetting. It’s about being unable to forget. Everybody else can hurt others and move on and forget about it, but those who are hurt spend their entire lives remembering how they were hurt, it’s sickening, it’s like a sickness the remembering disease.”

“Tsumiki-san I…” Komaeda tried to say something but he remained as ineffectual as ever just as he was slammed out the door. A light breeze blew by him, and he shivered pushing down his hospital robes like he was Marilyn Monroe, though he was neither beautiful or famous and therefore unworthy of the comparison. “I should really go get changed first…” He was sure nobody wanted to see how much of his pale skin was exposed by these hospital robes.  
  
After she was sure Komaeda had left, Mikan unwrapped the bandages around her hand and saw underneath, her hand was completely untouched. What she had been hiding with those bandages were the long red fingernails on the end of each of her fingers. She had not cut off somebody else’s hand and swapped it for her own, that would be silly, she had just applied fake nails to her own hand.  
  
Yet, suddenly it was like that hand did not belong to her. The hand gripped her mouth and squeezed tightly, preventing her from saying anything else, even if she could put these feelings into words they would probably come out sounding stupid, because she was just a stupid, useless girl, always getting in the way of things and making things worse with her presence. There was only one thing that could redeem an existence like hers.

 

😈

 

『I know I’ve been nothing but trouble for you when we’re together, and I’m so sorry about all that but...』  
  
Kumagawa was dreaming of his precious person, his world, he stood with her in a garden. There was no cherry blossoms flying in the background, nor were they standing in a field of flowers, the place they stood was empty, entirely devoid of color, there were dead tries reaching their emaciated and twisted limbs towards the skies, and crows gathered among those branches watching, and cackling in the background.  
  
However, none of that mattered. Even if the world was completely empty, he simply wnated to stand in it with her. It did not matter what the rest of the world looked like, because the world was entirely composed of the two of them, hand in hand, walking inside each other’s gardens. He reached forward taking her hands for once without fear, without hesitation that he usually felt taking such beautiful and untouched hands with his fingers that only corrupted things eating away at them like rust.  
  
Intertwining their fingers he pulled her closer. When their faces were centimeters apart, he asked it, looking unwaveringly into those empty eyes of hers, he would get as close as he could, he would say it as loudly as he could so she would know that to him a liar, this was his only undoubtedly true sentiment. 『Will you marry me, Junk-』  
  
“It seems like senpai is having a romantic dream, I feel really sorry for whoever he’s fantasizing about.” Komaeda’s voice suddenly spoke up.  
  
Kumagawa’s eyes shot open, and he raised his head. 『Oh, guess that wasn’t real after all.』His voice echoed with empty disappointment.  
  
Disappointment was neither hope nor despair, wait… Komaeda no longer thought about hope or despair, so there was no use dwelling on that. “I have no expectations at all when I come to see you and yet somehow you always manage to disappoint me.”

『It’s my talent. Remember there’s no such thing as bottoming out, things can always fall lower.』  
  
“So I was right, talent really is a cursed thing that can only make people miserable.”

『Nagito-chan you’re being so kind to me today! Did something put you in a good mood? Did you meet a cute male nurse in your stay at the hospital?』  
  
“How did you know about that…?”

『I’m always watching my cute kouhai. Always.』  
  
“I guess I should add stalker to the list of ways that you’re a terrible example of an upperclassmen, senpai.”

『Nooo, that was supposed to sound cute. I’m not a yandere, if I was that’d be too much of a character overlap with Yasuke-chan.』

“I don’t think you’re any kind of -dere, senpai. You’d have to be capable of love to be dere. You can just be a yanyan, there’s no overlap.”

『If I was a nyanyan, that’d sound way cuter.』  
  
Komaeda realized that he had lost track of what he had come to ask Kumagawa in their bantering again. He sighed and dismissed all of it, closing his eyes again. “This is nosense. Kumagawa-senpai, have you ever received a gift before?”

『Nope. I’ve never been given a gift before, not even for my birthday, probably because nobody has ever once thought it was a good thing that I was born into this world.』

“I was never given a gift before either… I just wanted to get Kuzuryuu-kun a present so we could make up from our fight but… why do I keep coming to you of all people for advice? This is like the blind leading the blind.”

『It’s probably because we’re both self obsessed emo freaks, so we can only relate our thoughts to those who are just like us.』

“Well, you’re useless as always.”

『Thank you I’m glad I could be no help at all.』  
  
Koameda opened his eyes then. I know exactly what you’re expecting, now I’m going to slip into metaphor heavy prose about the nature of human connection, but you see I’ve been doing this every time these two talk together and I can’t even keep things consistent for myself, so I don’t know why I’d bother to be consistent for a bunch of strangers even if they are my dear readers.  
  
Human failure. Damaged goods.  
They were similar, but different. Fuyuhiko had tried so hard to reach him with those honest emotions of his, but in response Komaeda only shut him out, and yet he could so easily open up in front of somebody like Kumagawa who he detested.  
  
He called it like looking into a mirror, a mirror with severe cracks in it. Broken mirrors were bad luck after all. The person you saw was just yourself looking back, but they looked warped, because the cracks in the mirror causes light to fracture and refract ever so slightly.

The world view must have been warped as well, the person belonging to the mirror world must have been looking at life through a cracked lens. Yet, he could not even bother to think about the mirror world because he was only thinking about himself, of the parts that were missing in his reflection because pieces of the mirror were gone now.  
  
Missing parts. A person born without something essential, too many missing pieces, too many cracks. There was no characteristic he had that was unlike anyone else, there was no way in which he was unique and totally irreplaceable, no he really was just average and unextraordinary in every sense of the words, but he had too many missing parts. That was why he was just like everyone, and that was why he was nothing like anyone at all.

That time with Nanami when he said such cruel things to Mikan, it was probably because he was only talking about himself. He doubted he had it in him to actually feel anger towards someone for having any kind of flaw unless it was a flaw that he had, simply because he was not close enough to others to feel anger. The human failure. In Osamu Dazai’s seminal novel No Longer Human, or Human Failure, or Rejection from Humanity, the main character is an artist who paints a portrait and stares at it as the embodiment of the uncanny valley, that which looks human but just not quite enough so as to unnerve everyone around them.

If he looked in an undamaged mirror surely that was what he would see, that kind of painting that was human but not human looking back at him. He was happy Kumagawa was such a cracked mirror then. Someone so alike him, but not. There was nothing special about Kumagawa either, except for his trauma, so he he wore those cracks on his body proudly, he did not bother to cover them up like Mikan.  
  
So he liked it, seeing himself but not seeing himself, facing himself but not. He could stare in the cracked mirror all day, and just like a child wonder what the life of the other him was like, and it was nothing more than a fanficul delusion. It was just playing at understanding others. It was exactly like a childish game. He did not even worry about how many cracks appeared in his reflection.  
  
He never had to worry because he know something like breaking apart and disappearing was not going to happen to this mirror. The world would refuse to end for both of them. They would simply break more and more, cracks running deeper and deeper without a bottom, as it was so hard to break that which was already broken.

Oh. I just rambled and contradicted myself again. Feel free to ignore this. My thoughts on the matter probably are not that deep. I am just a talkative delusional, defective, emo ninteen-year old.  
  
At least the world had beaten Kumagawa until he reached his broken state, he was the damaged goods after all. Perhaps Komaeda had simply been born this way, any thing the world added to him just piled onto what was already there.

He wanted to look away from others, because he did not want to see in them what was missing in himself. He did not want others to look at him because he did not want to see what was missing in him. Yet, he had to look somewhere, yet he had to be looked at. So, he played pretend in this mirror.  
  
Komaeda stopped staring at himself however and noticed something vital in the room. Despite Kumagawa’s complaint that he had never received a present, the room that previously looked like the realm of the dead with sheets covering the furniture, and the room barren except for a bed of desks Komaeda now saw it was completely full to bursting with flowers, and colorfully wrapped boxes and several stuffed rabbits including one that was extremely large. It looked like the kind of gifts that would be brought to a hospital room, or perhaps a wake.

“I thought you said you never received any presents, senpai.”

『These aren’t presents they’re bribes...』Kumagawa said, he probably thought that line sounded unbelievably cool. He laid back on his bed of desks, looking up at the ceiling that was neither familiar nor unfamiliar. 『Anshin’in-san is getting impatient she’s trying to bribe me to come back, she still doesn’t get how people work at all. She used to do this in the past too.』  
  
“Who…?”

『Nevermind forget about her, she doesn’t even exist.』Kumagawa sat up again, his eyes looking somewhere into the past. 『A girl’s never given me a present, but the girl I loved got plenty of presents from a girl once. Nobody ever gave her a gift that made her happy, but there was plenty of gifts she was indifferent towards. She especially did not care when they went ‘I made this especially for you’. She was like, pass! 』Kumagawa suddenly did an amazing impression of a girl’s voice, like his voice actor had been female all along or something.  
  
“Huh…?”

『I mean, there was nothing in particular that she liked. So even if you were to get her something she looked like she liked, like a bunch of flowers you arranged yourself with special meaning she wouldn’t even look at it.』  
  
“So, flowers are no good?”

『Also, even if you were to kill for her, she probably wouldn’t be satisfied. She was that kind of girl who could never feel satisfaction for even one moment of her life.』  
  
“Hey, hey, who jumps from flowers straight to murder?” Komaeda said, freaking out for a moment before sighing. He was starting to fear what Kumagawa would mention next. “I-is that all?.”

『The roughest one of all had to be a hand-knitted sweater. All floppy with her name written on it, that thing was way too heavy for her, somebody with that shallow existence, that hollow on the inside girl would just get weighed down by a gift like that. 』

“So, no matter what I tried to give them, it’d just be a bother, huh?” Komaeda said. He had already known it for a long time, that his presence put others at unease, that the sum total of his existence was a petty annoyance.

『You’ll just bother him, but Nagito-chan if he’s your friend than I’m sure he’ll be happy to be bothered by you. I’m always happy when you come to annoy me. I'm sure your presence will be a present to him.』  
  
Komaeda said rather coldly, “But it’s different between you and me because we’re not friends senpai.” Before leaving, letting the door swing shut on the empty room behind him.

 

😈

  
Enoshima Junko kicked a door open on an empty room. That was not a metaphor, but rather it was literal as the room that the sleeping Kumagawa almost never left was completely deserted.  
  
On the desks tied together that he used as a bed there was a single note. _Meet me in the place of our first memory. Do you remember?_ The emotion she felt when she recognized the note was neither despair nor anger, but rather an intense apathy that annoyed her, like a hole in herself that the wind was blowing through and making an annoying whistle she wanted to ignore. So, she acted petty and dug her nails into the note, and then crumpled it up and bit into it.  
  
A moment into her tantrum she realized that paper tasted terrible and she spit it out. As she stomped out of the door, and down the stairs once more, just as she was making it to the outside world, she noticed the ground was shaking.  
  
Immediately her phone rang. She picked it up, “Kamukura, Kamukura, yas-”  
  
“Please do not make me relive the worst memory of my , and it is not Kamukura anymore.” Izuru’s voice came impassively on the other end of the phone.  
  
“You know for a guy with the personality of wet cardboard you really are picky on how people interact with you.”

“It’s called having standards. I am sure you are unaware because nobody you ever interacted with ever had any, especially Kumagawa-senpai.”  
  
“Hey, I’m the one who lowered my standards for him!” She said, “I descended from my throne we’ve already been over this thematically-”  
  
“I suppose I cannot stop you from telling yourself that. Regardless look at the sky.”

Junko could have kept bantering for a few more lines but she decided on a whim to be cooperative, and her eyes trailed across the horizon. The hospital that Kamukura was currently calling from had become a distorted image, growing in size until it reached the sky. “Eh, is the program glitching? I told you it was a bad idea to let you do most of the program when the right side of your brain is half dumbass now.”  
  
“I know you are completely aware of how inaccurate that statement is, you grew up with a neurosurgeon childhood friend.”  
  
“Yeah, why’s the world going all silent hill all of a sudden?”  
  
“Enough video games.”  
  
“But we’re in a video game!”  
  
“And I was in one for seven years and how many do you think I had to here from your splinter ai counterpart who thought she was equally as clever, joke about how the world was just like a video game..”  
  
“Boo hoo, you’re no fun at all. You’re totes lame, senpai.”  
  
“Considering your definition of fun I would rather ben boring in your eyes. Now, this world is shaped by Komaeda’s dream technically, but are you aware of Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious?”  
  
“You mean like in the persona games.”  
  
“Use a more intellectual source of reference please.”  
  
“You mean like in evangelion?”  
  
“Have you ever even opened a text book once in your life?”  
  
“Are you implying that it’s a bad thing that most of my knowledge of human psychology came the anime I watched?”  
  
Izuru made a sound like a dying cat on the other end of the line, and then continued on. “Technically, the reason every dreamer in this world is able to dream the same dream is because of the Bookmaker Virus that Kumagawa implanted in them, reducing them to his level and creating Komaeda’s dream of a world without talent. However, because Kumagawa-kun shared control with Komaeda, there’s a part of Komaeda that remembers and narrates this world, controlling it effectively and maintaining it while there’s another part of him that forgets. However, even if Komaeda is the main one that remembers in this world, this world is a collective subconscious created by all the dreams of the dreamers connected therefore if somebody else could remember…”  
  
“Then they’d influence the shape of this world too, duh! I already figured it out like five minutes ago. I don’t know why you bothered to ramble on so long with that completely boring explanation.”  
  
“If you knew then why didn’t you just say so?”  
  
“I thought the audience needed some exposition.”  
  
“There is no audience!”  
  
“Yes there is, and they’re very disappointed with your performance right now. I’m hearing like all of the boos.”  
  
“It’s just you, be quiet. Anyway, I’m going to act as originally planned it looks like we’ll need to split up to handle this.”  
  
“Ugh, but I don't ant to do things. I want to not do things like I usually do and have everyone else do things for me.” Junko whined into the other end of the phone.  
  
“This time though it was your personal touch that broke her, so you can deal with it.”  
  
“Hey, I’m not the one who broke her. The entire world broke her, I just took advantage of the good work everybody else did and built on top of it, really I should be thanked for making something so useful out of that broken mess -ugh, don’t hang up on me Hinata-senpai! I’m not done philosophizing at you yet! Tell me you hate me! Come on!” Junko said, before slamming the phone on the ground and breaking it with her heel. She looked at the distorted hospital in the distance and sighed.

Even if Kumagawa was a broken toy he was still hers. She hated it most of all when other people tried to play with her toys. She held onto her chest once more, trying to perserve the lone spark of feeling Kumagawa had ignited in her, trying to hang on to the ghost feeling of that warmth, but it was like nobody could reach or touch him anymore. It was like being next to a ghost, or a demon, believe in them all you want but feelings could not reach them.

That was why the gears in her were getting messed up, that was why the switches were flicked. She felt a shiver of anxiety that was neither hope nor despair, irrritation, annoyance, Kumagawa’s existence and his refusal to exist within any bounds of logic still bothered her logically driven brain to no end. She was being driven crazier and crazier, turning him over and over again in her head, but that was exactly what she wanted.  
  
That was what she would not let be taken away, because that emotion, that real sentiment belonged entirely to herself and she would drive her red nails into it and destroy it before she let anyone else touch it. Even if it meant dealing with something bothersome now that she felt absolutely nothing towards one way or another.  
  
She was a logical girl, but she also only ever acted on impulsive feelings, she only cared about that which made her feel, because she felt nothing at all for the vast majority of this entire world, and all the people inside of it. They were nobodies with washed out features, heartless dolls, an entirely colorless world.  
  
She had made her way to the hospital quickly enough, and kicked the door down only to see there was no simulation of a lobby inside, the hospital had changed forms from a regular hospital to what Junko described as this.  
  
“What the hell is this place, Kafka’s wet dream?”  
  
. The floors were black and white tile, and they extended into a hallway that looked infinite. The moment she took a step, she heard a blaring noise, that echoed through her right down to her empty core.  
  
There was no reason for why she did what she did. She was simply born, lacking the vast majority of parts that most normal people had, but with a brain that functioned so well as to overcompensate for these missing parts. It made her exactly aware of how different she was than others, and because of that how easily she could move around and manipulate the others around her.  
  
Sometimes she felt like she was cheated, like everybody else living a normal life, enjoying their normal life, were all able to distract themselves sufficiently from what was obviously an empty world, like they were so deluded they did not even grasp how boring their little lives were. She felt jealous of those who were part of the delusion that she had never even gotten a chance to be part of, because she was too smart, because she saw through it from the moment she was born.  
  
Her desire was simple, to enjoy her school life the way everybody else did. However, she was utterly true to that desire, especially when the only things she enjoyed was twisted and unsavory things. She did not care about breaking the porcelain dolls she played with known as people, because she could love a broken person as much as she could a whole one.  
  
Now though, she was doing the thing she hated the most, she was dragging herself through intense apathy. The hospital extended before her, and she saw stairs leading up. If she were pretentious she might even call tem the stairs to heaven. On the stairs, images of a black and white bear, half good, and half evil, repeated itself, and on the walls as well like some kind of cutesy wallpaper.

By three flights of stairs up she had gotten unbelievably sick of her once beloved black and white aesthetic. Yet, she had to keep climbing, because she knew where this would lead her. She remembered in an instant. _Our first memory._ Once in the past, she had taken an Ultimate Nurse to a hospital, and put on a show for her, showing that it was much more fun for nurses to torment their patients who were still completely dependant on them, by showing her a nurse who beat an old man again and again, only for her crimes to be forgotten because of the man’s memory problems.  
  
Extending on the floor, there were arrows that were also black and white. The black and white tiles, stripes, all seemed to run into each other, creating a confusing mess that was painful for her brain that loved order, and fashion, and things that looked beautiful together to look at.  
  
Suddenly, voices blared over the speakers, above the white noise music she was displaying.  
  
“Ocean.” 『Island.』

“Birth.” 『Mistake.』  
  
“Life.” 『Meaningless.』  
  
“Live.” 『Spite.』  
  
“Die.” 『I don’t care.』『I want to sleep.』  
  
“Dying.” 『Failure.』 『Let me sleep.』

The voices speaking back and forth, falling repettively like rain drops she recognized them but she had no reaction to them at all. In the background of those voices she heard the ticking of several clocks at once, more discordant noise.  
  
Suddenly, several holes in the walls opened up and bouquets of flowers of many different kind fell from every angle. Enoshima Junko’s annoyance doubled as suddenly she was buried under flowers, and smelling several different contrasting scents at once that of course her overpowered sensory facilities picked up, and seeing every color clash at once.  
  
“Can you not remember this?” A voice called out.  
  
She dragged herself out of the flowers, and stomped on one of the bocquets before continuing onward. The only emotion she showed was a slight gritting of her teeth, her eyes were apthetic as ever as she rounded another flight of stairs at the end of the hallway and climbed them.

  
“Scorn.” 『Loser.』

“Home.”『Person.』  
  
“Person.” 『Gone.』  
  
“Sin.” 『Lie.』  
  
“Liar.” 『Demon.』  
  
When she got in the middle fo the hallway, suddenly again a closet door was thrown open and a skeleton fell on top of her, like it was a jump scare in a low budget haunted house. She looked around and saw there were more skeletons piled on the ground, but they were nothing more than fakes, props.

“What about this?”  
  
She stepped over one breaking the plastic bone. Her heels traveling over them, she was utterly indifferent as she continued forward. Climbing the tower, higher, and higher, the only reason people built towers this high as because they wanted to see them collapse. She really thought that.  
  
The black and white was becoming too confusing before even her eyes, the stripes went from horizontal, to vertical, to diagonal, in fashion terms they were totally clashing. If this building were a person their outfit would look fat right now. She traveled to the next floor.

“Woman.” 『Junko.』  
  
“Pride.” 『Junko.』  
  
“Strength.” 『Junko.』  
  
“Island.” 『Lonely.』  
  
“Alone.” 『Junko.』  
  
The girl who stood alone, unaffected by everything, unrelated to anything, untouchable, her body having the quality of never being touched, not a single crack on her. She climbed the confusing black and white looking stripes once more, and turned the hallway. Suddenly, another door flew open, and a cart flew out of the door.  
  
On the cart, there was a half finished sweater. The tackiest handmade thing imaginable. It had the letters “JUNKO LOVE” written on it in english with a giant heart, there was still a string running from it from where it had been left unfinished.  
  
“Put that on. You have no other choice.”  
  
Enoshima gritted her teeth in annoyance, and her eyes narrowed in disgust at having to wear something so unfashionable. She pulled it over her head, her two pig tails getting caught in it for a moment before her head finally peeked out, and she wore the woolf scarf over her fahsionable red and black uniform.  
  
She followed the unwound thread through the mazelike hospital, as she walked along in the hallway she saw more of the black and white monokuma faces appear, staring at her from every angle. There was a single mannequin right before a door. It had a large plush bear head, and a maid outfit on top of it, right she had forced that girl to wear that outfit as a joke.  
  
“So, have you at last remembered?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve remembered.” Enoshima Junko finally reached the door, and entered it, the hospital lights made her shadow extend far beyond her feet and it entered before she did. That was right, once she had brought Tsumiki Mikan to a hospital, promising to show her the wonders of despair, and she had called it their first precious memory.  
  
That was all  a lie of course, because to Enoshima Junko there was no such thing as precious things, or precious memories, all things were qually perishable and without meaning.  
  
Except one small thing that just happened to be a consistent bother to her, because Kumagawa Misogi just so happened to be immortal, and such thorough nonsense even her brain could not analyze him perfectly.

He did not become used to it, nor did his heart slowly become blackened over time until he became accustomed to such things. Each loss felt fresh, every pain sharply stung. He was not someone who could bravely say, “It’s because I’ve felt much worse pain, that I can endure this now.  
  
He was a coward who was constantly afraid he could fall farther, that there was more pain waiting for him, worse than he had ever felt. He was constantly worrying about what he’d lose next.    
  
When he walked forward in spite of that fear, he did not consider it bravery. Walking into a place like this of his own free will, it was just stupidity. The stupidity of a desperate loser, in other words, the only move someone like Kumagawa Misogi could make. Running away from pain, running into pain, that was his whole life, just running, there was no destination, no nobility, no form about it.   
  
Just like his namesake he was a pure river that ran forward in search of something. The place he was supposed to go next though, he was unsure, it was being carved on his face by needlepoint.  
  
Tsumiki MIkan  reached forward and touched his cheek. He felt slight pinpricks of pain as she squeezed it, agitating the stitches that were over his lips. “Now I’m starting to see why Junko fell for you, you’re so precious and cute when you’re like this senpai!” Tsumiki Mikan said in a voice of genuine joy. “Close your eyes senpai, forget the real world even exists, stay dreaming and we can stay in this happy dream forever. I’ll let you depend on me forever.”  
  
He was standing on his knees with his hands handcuffed behind his back, his shirt removed, and his head hung there limply as Tsumiki Mikan finished sewing his mouth shut. All of the pleasure she had given him slowly nursing him back to health and taking care of him, she was now giving him just as much pain, because that was all life was a nonstop cycle of pleasure and pain. That was all interacting with other people was, getting hurt, and then being comforted by the same people only to be hurt again.  
  
The moment Enoshima Junko walked into the room, Kumagawa Misogi collapsed, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He simply lie there on the floor.Tsumiki looked around at all of the clocks she had set in the room. The record player she had left blaring with unpleasant white noise. “Nooo, you’re not supposed to fall asleep yet. The show’s just beginning. Ugh, after I took such care to keep you awake. He really is useless.” She slapped his cheeks gently to try to wake him up but to no avail. Tsumiki Mikan turned around looking at Enoshima Junko with a sweet smile, like a lovesick girl. “That sweater really suits you! Bright red suits you, since that’s the color of spilling blood that you find so pretty. I thought it was so charming, that you found beauty in broken things like me.”  
  
Enoshima Junko merely tilted her head, as if she was confused by the whole scene in front of her. “ Hey, Tsumiki-san. Do you want to know… what I really think of you?”

Voices whispered in the back of Tsumiki’s head. _You must not give a definition to love. It’s an insult to love to try to define love. Anything is a form of love._ However, she shut them out in an instant, looking at Junko as if expecting the whole world from her. “What… what did you remember about me?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Nothing? So… you don’t remember.”  
  
“Oh, I remember every intense high defintion two point five dimmensional detail about every moment we were together, but all of that is nothing to me. I don’t give a damn basically. I never cared even one bit for you. The only thing extraordinary about you was how desperate you were to please me, but really that just made you more boring because of how easy you were to manipulate.”  
  
After all the build up, Mikan only responded to that with a squeaky. “W-what?”

“That whole beloved thing was just a one sided thing imagined on your part. I just went along with it, but to be honest I care more about Hagakure then I do you.”  
  
“I… I lost to a person like Hagakure.”

Poor Hagakure he’s not even in this story.  
  
“Don’t give me that dumb surprised face. Don’t pretend to be humble either. It’s really haughty that a chump like you thinks they can interfere in the relationship between Misogi and I. It’s not like you wanted to be loved, because love would be painful to you, you just wanted a one sided love that you could imagine, a fantasy, an infatuation to escape from the pain. All you cared about was the image of your beloved, it didn’t even have to be me, it could have been anyone.”  
  
Enoshima Junko may have mistakenly looked like she was tamed, but the truth of the matter was she was nothing more than a wild beast. She was seeking to dig her claws into others. Tsumiki Mikan, that girl barely held together by bandages, was basically just begging her to be torn apart between those claws.  
  
“W...why? If you don’t care about other people at all. Then why, why Kumagawa-senpai? Why not me?”  
  
“That’s none of your business, not even worth explaining to a chump like you. It’s like this whole stunt, it doesn’t even make me feel anger, or even annoyance, I just feel nothing but apathy. You’re so incompetnet you couldn’t make me feel something by torturing the boy I love in front of me.” Enoshima Junko said, eyes dull with her own emptiness for a moment as she held her hand over her chest, before those predator eyes turned on MIkan and again cut straight through her. “I suppose if I had to explain though, it’s because Kumagawa wounds me, while I’m wounded by him, and when his blood splashes in that moment I can taste a little bit of his warmth.”  
  
“That’s messed up… That’s… so selfish.” Tsumiki Mikan, seeing the true face of that girl whose face she had forgotten and remembered all over again, stepped backwards from it, tripping over her own feet and falling.  
  
Enoshima Junko simply stood over her, proud and tall in her boots. “That’s right, That’s why I do that. It’s all about me, you don’t even exist in my world. I’m standing in front of you right now, and it’s like I can barely see you.”  
  
Tsumiki Mikan went grasping on the floor. As she groped around desperately, her fingers curled around a scalpel. She repeated what Junko said earlier, still processing the words. “So basically… you don’t give a damn right…” But Junko gave no response, not even the smile of enjoying her current despair. In that instant a switch was flipped. She imagined the pretty red blood that would emerged from Junko’s breasts, if she stabbed her with that scalpel straight in the chest.  
  
However, before that switch could be flipped, Kumagawa Misogi had crawled forward on the ground and bit at the end of her apron. When she went to move and suddenly was stopped she looked down. Kumagawa’s body twisted, and she heard the poping and cracking of his bones as he brought the handcuffs above his head and broke and readjusted his wrists to slide them off. That hand reached out and grabbed her by the sleeve.

『Mikan-chan.』  
  
“Kumagawa-sepai. Doesn’t that hurt…?”

Kumagawa lifted himself up them. Easily, he jammed a finger into his mouth, and pulled at the stitches, not caring the way it made his flesh stretch, or agitated the holes in his flesh. He pulled the strings until they broke, then licked the inside of his cracked lips. He did not even bother with the strings around his eyes.

『Mikan-chan. We weren’t done yet. Aren’t you going to pick up where you left off? Aren’t you going to beat me and hurt me and hurt me and make me experience pain and suffering, and then kill me off. Your actions spurred by simple jealousy towards me, ordinary remorse, and your own boring sense of guilt.』  
  
“Th-that’s right.”

『You don’t say.』He clutched his right index finger in his left hand. 『I think your torture was pretty weak, but we did get interrupted in the early part. So, if you were to continue you might break my finger like this…?』He forced the finger backward, snapping the bone. There was a sound like a wire suddenly snapping in a high tension bridge, or perhaps Mikan only heard that in the back of her mind.  
  
Her face froze in shock.  
  
An overwhelming maddening pain went through him, but his eyes remained sewn shut, and he made no expression at all flashing the broken digit in front of Mikan’s face. 『Satisfied?』A quiet look of horror overtook her, but Kumagawa could not see it. 『You’re not, are you? Why would you be satisfied with that? That’s not nearly enough to cheer you up. You’ve loved, and loved and loved Junko so much, so there’s no way you’re satisfied yet. Because if it’s for love, morals, laws, and common sense don’t mean a thing. Come on tell me what bone you want me to break next, if it's for the sake of MIkan-chan's love then I don't mind.』  
  
She trembled, but nobody in the room particularly cared for that display of emotion.

『Choose one, come on choose. Tell me what you want to break I'd do anything for you. Fine, I'll choose. I guess the middle finger is next?』He clutched his middle finger.  
  
_Snap.  
_

Another string broke, but which string was it? The string that was connected to the puppets digits, the strings that held together Mikan's fragile mind, or was it the strings that connected them. Too many strings, so many it was easy to be strangled, and yet he broke them one by one. 

『Tell me which one you want. Ring finger next?』  
  
He bent his ring until he heard a string break.   
  
_Snap._ _  
_

『Come on, come on, Mikan-chan this is what you wanted right? You have to choose. Should I just keep guessing? And finally, the pinky?』  
  
He twisted his pinky in an impossible direction.

_Snap._

Breaking something that had already been broken and broken again. His shape was definitely twisted, the gnarled fingers were just a symptom of his twisted form. Strings criss crossed in front of them and Mikan stared in confusion back and forth.   
  
“Ah… ah… ah…” The blood rushing to her face, anxiety, concern, it all rushed towards her feeling everything at once. She suddenly rushed for him and grabbed his hand, pulling his unbroken hand away from the rest of him. “What are you doing senpai?”

『Why are you backing down now? If you weren’t serious about torture you should not have joked around, even a comedian like me won’t laugh at that. If this will really make you feel better than-』  
  
“Senpai! What are you!? There’s no malice in you at all even though I dragged you all the way here!? Even though I was the one who hurt you!? It’s like you don’t care about what other people do to you at all!”  
  
She wrestled with him, with the strings tied around his wrist trying to pull them away. However, Kumagawa who was usually so weak, who had been so lifeless she could drag his body here like she was transporting a corpse with no resistance, suddenly ripped his hand away from her easily. 

『Mikan-chan.』  
  
Tsumiki had given everything with that last outburst, and yet none of it reached him.  She could not stop him, all he could do was cry. 

『I’m just a broken doll.』  
  
Snot leaked out of her nose.

『That’s why I have no nerves.』  
  
Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the snot a thoroughly ugly cry.

『That’s why I have no heart.』  
  
He put his hand towards the ground, and then threw all of his body’s weight like a twisted looking dance onto his left arm.  
  
_Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap._

 『What a satisfying quartet of sounds. 』

He pulled on every string at once, tensing them until they broke. He wanted to destroy the string's section of the orchestra. 

『What I love about life is things can always become more twisted.』  
  
_Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap._

You endured everything you could, pushed the tension limit of the strings to the max, and then one day they just snapped. That was life. 

He brought up his broken fingers, bent in the wrong direction and then tilted his head puzzling over them.『This is a good show, too bad, I wonder if I’ll be able to applaud with these hands, or fondle Junko's boobies anymore.』  
  
“Isn’t that painful?”

『Everything is painful, life is nothing but pain, I’ve grown tired of it, it’s so goddamn boring I just want to take a nap.』

“Senpai, please, stop…” She had tried crying and now begging. The only options available to a victim, a useless victim. 

『Why should I stop? This kind of torture was what you were already going to be doing. It’s not different than if you do it. Tear out my fingernails next, and then my toenails, light my hair on fire, cover my head in a bag and drop water on it like I’m drowning, if you feel like doing any of that I’m fine with it… 』  
  
“Senpai… Stop, stop, stop…”

『Then, you don’t want to hurt others, MIkan-chan. You don’t enjoy it? You should have just told me so it would have saved a lot of trouble.』Kumagawa looked at her like he truly did not understand the words  _I don't want to hurt you._ Pain was the deafult he expected from everyone, every last person on earth existed to hurt him. 『It's fine, I wont' be mad, I won't hate you, you know once I had an annoying habit of chewing my nails and the girl I loved like an older sister ripped out my nails one by one.』  
  
“I don’t…but it’s all I know how to do. I grew a little bit more confident when Junko embraced me, and I started to kill others for her sake. I grew a little more confident in this world and I hurt you.”

『Hey, MIkan-chan. Why are you sticking around in this world anyway?』  
  
“I don’t want to go back to the real world. I don’t want to return to being a pathetic person who can only hurt others. It’s scary, I’ll get hurt again…” Tsumiki Mikan had been reduced to a crying child. However, even with broken fingers, Kumagawa embraced such a person from behind. “I don’t know how to love others normally, I don’t know how to love myself. I don’t know how to do anything right.”

『Mikan-chan. There’s no such thing as a lost cause. Even Enoshima Junko deserves a chance, so you too. Go to the real world ahead of me please, it’s only there, it’s only by loving others and trying again and again that you can learn to do it, to love yourself.』  
  
"I was wrong. I was so wrong. I'm so sorry for hurting you, I should have never wanted to be loved if it led to this." 

『Mikan-chan, you were not wrong. It's not wrong for you to desire to be loved, even if that desire became twisted among the way. Even if it resulted in this.』He gestured with his broken hand, fingers simply dangling there. 『You were not wrong.』

“Kumagawa-senpai... how do you know it’s not too late for me?”“

『Listen, if you want to be forgiven Mikan-chan, you have to endure the punishment. That’s why, go on and live. Go on ahead of me, and learn to live without me, and when you have I’ll catch up I promise.』  
  
“Punishment…” Meeting Kumagawa was like a punishment for her reckless love of Junko. She had been forced to endure somebody other than her, genuinely falling in love with that person that should have been impossible for anyone to love. “It was a nice punishment…” She thought, smiling sweetly at Kumagawa, before the last thing of her to disappear was her smile.  
  
Kumagawa was wrapping his arms around nothing at all. He fell forward for a moment, and then stared straight past Junko. 『I’m sorry for showing you such a boring show..』  
  
“Misogi.”

『Junkai-chan.』Kumagawa said, walking past her and noticing a little girl in the corner of the room, hiding in the shadows, with a paper bag over her face. He offered his back to her and she climbed on it immediately.  
  
“Whatever, I hate you so much that watching you break your own fingers wasn’t even the least bit satsifying it was just boring.” Junkai said, leaning on him.

『Girls like you are so hard to please.』Kumagawa muttered to himself, as he left Junko alone in the room.  
  
Immediately after he had gone, she hugged herself, squeezing her own arms so tightly, that her nails dug into her own flesh leaving red streaks as small droplets of blood were drawn. She tried to keep all those emotions inside herself, but it was like keeping a big bang’s worth of energy within. “At that moment… why did you reach out to Tsumiki-senpai but not me… stupid Misogi.”  
  
She wanted a reason. She wanted that reason to be her beloved.

Tsumiki Mikan wanted to live for love. Really, people should be more honest and do things for themselves. Thinking you can live for a reason is nothing more than a happy delusion. But once you realize it’s only a delusion, there’s no place left to go.  
Asking questions about life and existence just leads to a dead end.

Trying to find meaning is equally dead.  
  
Just like Kumagawa and Junko, there’s no place left to go. What’s ahead of you now isn’t even despair, but a pitch-black void.  
It’s a dead end. No hope for you then.  
That was what she felt in that twisted hospital corridor, like she had reached a dead end, like there was a wall between her and Misogi she could not destroy for once.  
He might as well have been in another closed off world entirely.

 

😈

 

 

When Komaeda returned to the hospital room he found it completely empty. Lying in Fuyuhiko’s bed there was nothing more than a note and a phone. He tried to check around for Kirigiri and Natsumi to see if they knew where he was, but suddenly they were nowhere to be found either.  
  
It was like the entire hospital was empty. It was like it had become a ghost hospital. Before he could investigate further, suddenly the phone rung. “If you want to see your friend again, you have to remember.”  
  
The voice said on the other line. It was a voice completely devoid of emotion, and yet somehow just hearing it made him well up with emotions that he did not understand. He immediately kept the phone to his ear, almost begging wordlessly for the voice to speak again.  
  
For some reason he was possessed by the feeling he had to go down. He needed to descend the steps in order to reclaim that memory, to revisit the first memory he had with that voice. He reached the steps and saw that the hallway had become black and white.  
  
He ran down the stairs, but he was clumsy just like Mikan, so a two or three times he tripped and fell down the stairs instead. He crashed into the landing, only to immediately stand up. There was no way a body as weak as his, a doll made of porcealin, broken glass, was standing up like this without a scratch, but to him it did not hurt much.  
  
Having come this far, he was finally getting somewhere. Althought there was no way a broken brain like himself could control his nervous system, let alone normal human beings, he was doing something similar. Forgetting about pain, he was becoming stronger, or perhaps throwing it away he became weak.  
  
Either way, rather than apathy as he trudged through the black and white hospital halls, falling down stairs, he was feeling ecstatic. He picked himself up off the wall and stood up again losing track of where he had wandered.  
  
Suddenly the phone buzzed again. “Do you remember?” The emotionless voice asked. On the floor in front of him, like a trail that was left for him, there was a single cell phone charm in the shape of a sheep. He picked it up and closed his hands around it.  
  
He continued on, it did not hurt to tumble, but it was problematic he could not walk properly. Something about the hospital had become distorted, and the black and white colorings on the walls, the chess board tiles of the floor, and the repettition of the annoying bear symbol was only making it worse, which was bad because his sensory capabilities had never been that great to begin with.  
  
He felt unstable, moreso than usual, as if he was losing his grip on the flow of reality in front of him. That made no sense whatsoever however because he had never had any grip on reality to begin with. There was no way an insignificant person like him could even make a ripple in the flow of reality or change one thing about fate.  
  
He was pathetic? What’s pathetic? Space is pathetic. There is nothing worth anything anywhere in this world. Nowhere? Nowhere. This entire world was fake. Everything that you think has value is merely delusion.  
  
Suddenly the phone buzzed again. “Do you remember yet?” The phone asked him again in an emotionless voice.  
  
He looked down and saw somebody had left a gun on the floor. That was incredibly unsafe to do in a hospital. He picked the gun up and tucked it behind the sweater vest that he wore over his uniform. He got the feeling that he had hidden a gun there at some point in the past, but that made no sense because he was just a normal student who had never done anything significant in his life. Guns were illegal to own in japan, he would not break the laws of this world, the laws were too strong and he was weak.  
  
He tumbled down another flight of steps, and he had finally reached the basement. Even though this time he hit his head hard, pain was just a dull thing to him. It was probably not good to hit a head so much that had already been broken to begin with, to add on to the damage, but he was apathetic.  
  
He was trying to remember, trying so hard to remember, but even if a lantern were to spin in front of his eyes he would see no light. Why would he even think he had precious memories? His entire life up until this point was nothing.  
  
There was nothing to remember. The phone buzzed a third time. “Hey, do you remember me?”  
  
He snapped back to reality. He snapped. He looked to the ground and saw that there was a handcuff there, leading to a long chain. He reached and grabbed it, and chained it around his hand, and then followed the chain the rest of the way.

When he finally made it, there Fuyuhiko was tied up and gagged in the corner. _Pekoyama-san might find this image kinky. Wait, whose Pekoyama-san._ The disembodied voice in his head that was also sometimes the narrator in this world, spoke without his consent, and he did not think about it too much. He may have hurt his brain a bit with the tumbles, not that it mattered. Not that it matters for a brain that was broken from the start.  
  
Perhaps he had not been rushing so fast because he wanted to save Fuyuhiko. Perhaps he had tripped over his own feet on purpose, and threw himself down those stairs, perhaps he wanted to break a little more.  
  
Either way there was something he needed to do. The thought of that made him want to burst out laughing. Even a child who had abandoned everything else to play pretend in the world, even an invisible member of the crowd could still think _there’s something I have to do._ He had been calling himself invisible and irrelevant over and over again, that there was nothing he could do, and now he realized more than anyone else, he was a giant fool for thinking so, and everybody else had realized it before him, they all knew that he was merely lying he was the last to realize.  
  
In the end, however, he could not laugh.  
  
The emotionless boy had delicately traced the contour of Fuyuhiko's chin, and then lifted him up by that point. Fuyuhiko snapped like a muzzled dog but he gave no reaction. "You've really become a lot less manly lately, Kuzuryuu. What are you doing, clinging to the illusion of your sister?"  
  
"..." The violent dog foaming at the mouth, the dog of the yakuza fell silent.   
  
The boy in black turned his head away as if bored and looked back to Komaeda again.   
  
“Did you remember yet?”  
  
A nostagliac voice answered him. A voice that remained emotionless, even as he confronted the spiky haired terrorist staring with two red eyes. He should not have expected anything, to provoke any emotion from this person.  
  
He could not make that boy laugh either.  
  
“Do you remember what you did with that gun the first day we met?” The emotionless boy asked him.  
  
Komaeda nodded. For a moment he pointed the gun at the boy. However, he realized how pointless that would be. He was not someone who could move others or be moved by others. In the end it was only about himself, it was all about himself. He was sure even coming to save Fuyuhiko, was just about saving some part of himself.  
  
His grip on reality loosened and loosened as the image of the hospital warped around him. Then suddenly, he pointed the gun back at his own temple instead. “Like this, right? This is what I should have done that day.”  
  
The world after that moment went by in slow motion.  
It was like a film projector had slowed down and was playing it frame by frame.  
If this world was a video game it would be experiencing serious lag.  
The figure in all black leaped forward at him. The moment that he lost his grip on his finger, and it pulled the trigger, Izuru moved forward faster than that, wrapping his arms around Komaeda’s neck.  
  
He pushed the boy’s head out of the way, and at the same time pushed the gun barrel back. The gun fired off, but pointing it a random direction the bullet only scratched off the side of Izuru’s face. He took in unflinchingly. Komaeda thought he would take it without showing any emotion at all, but as he saw a flash of light reveal that pitch black boy’s face, his entire face was twisted up in worry and agony.

 _For me?_ _  
_ _Pain? For a person like me? For a dull existence like mine?_ _  
  
_

The two of them hit the floor together at exactly the same time. Izuru had wrapped his arms around him,cradled the back of his head, shielded it. He had taken so many falls today it did not matter at all, but apparently to this boy it mattered.  
  
He was being held.  
Someone had embraced him.  
They wrapped their arms around him.

Then suddenly, Izuru removed himself from Komaeda. The warm thing disappeared from him, like it went away to a far place, like it went an entire world away. Izuru was staring down with red eyes, looking down on him. “Death is such an utterly boring thing, there’s no romance at about it at all.”  
  
He said, and then as if he had just given up he turned his back and walked away.  
  
Komaeda wanted to reach after him, but Fuyuhko was still tied up. A moment later, the ropes were on the floor, and Fuyuhiko was rubbing his wrists. Komaeda looked back to see the black and white hallway had completely disappeared and they were standing in a normal hospita basement.

 _That’s what I thought._ _  
_ _The world didn’t suddenly go crazy just me._ _  
_

Komaeda looked down at Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko. He had gone all this way to save the boy. He had taken a tumble, and even held a gun. Despite claiming he was a nobody who could accomplish nothing. His actions would probably be meaningless in the end.  
  
Saving him now probably meant there was someone he failed ot save, or that he would fail to save Kuzuryuu at another date.  
  
Yet, Komaeda could not help but smile.  
  
“I’m so happy you’re alright.”  
  
He said, and then finally he threw his arms around him.  
  
“Don’t hug me you weirdo! Next time point the gun at the bad guy not yourself! Fucking idiot!” Kuzuryuu swore up a storm.  
  
Komaeda however, happy to be near his friend, was finally able to laugh.  
  
Back in their room, Kumagawa plucked the strings from his eyes and tried to fall asleep again.

 

A world that can't end.   
  
Kumagawa Misogi smiled as he thought of that, as he thought of that girl who was entitled enough to think she could destroy the whole world, that called herself a world destroyer. He only had one thing to say in response.   
  
I love you.  
  
Words from the person you love.   
  
They were like strings that held you up and tied you down at once.   
  
Just saying it like that, was enough.   
  
He had never heard them before, so he thought they had some kind of special value.  
  
They were hollow, entirely empty words.  
  
Words anybody could say, just substance-less vocabulary.  
  
Words that could forgive anyone, perhaps.  
  
Like that girl so desperate to be forgiven.  
  
But there's a difference between being forgiven and being saved.   
  
The words he wanted to say to her were much more precious. 

 『Don't be so spoiled.』 


	6. You and I Are Connected by M

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for violence towards animals in this chapter. Sorry about that. It's Junko's fault. Blame Junko not me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to play guess the references!  
> Art by Oakyvii on tumblr!  
> Mawaru Penguindum Reference this chapter.  
> Also a Standing Ovation with Izaya reference.

“ _People without talent are parasites. Ticks. Mindlessly gorging themselves on the blood of larger creatures, they pair off and reproduce. That’s it.”_

Kamukura Izuru had been led out of his featureless white room. He wore a blue hospital gown and his hair was just starting to lengthen, it had already reached his shoulders and the antennae in the middle of his hair had grown so long it fell in front of his face. When the scientists first had found him in his room, he gave so little response and had been coughing up blood as a result of the after effects of the surgery, that at first they picked him up by the arms and dragged him like a rag doll. He decided that the strain on his arms was would be lesser if they let go of him, so he began to walk on his own. As he walked amongst faceless blue scientists, his red eyes flickering back and forth like targets searching for something to set their sights on, they all avoided making direct contact with his gaze. He was being led by two faceless men at his side, even though he had not yet done a single thing his hands were already chained up.  
  
However, when he was led to that man’s room, that calm looking man immediately snapped his fingers and the chains were removed from his hands.  
_  
_ _“Once upon a time the ticks tried to catch lightning in a bottle, front loading every talent they could into one of their own. The super high school level hope they called him. In reality an inextinguishable host.”_  
  
The man had brown eyes, and slicked back, dark brown hair. Despite all attempts to slick it back, his hair was messy in the front, and the back spiked up like a pair of two antannae. Unlike all the other faceless scientist, Kamukura saw this man’s face because there were two indistinguishable features. A smile present on it, and the two sharp eyes watching him.  
  
He recognized those eyes, the look in them. The eyes he had viewed the world through, ever since he had finally been let out of that capsule and given a name, like a phoenix reborn from the ashes. Those were his eyes looking back at him. This man and him had something in common. He looked a Kamukura, and everyone else in the room, as you would look at a bug.

However despite the way all the other scientists on the project seemed terrified of him, and fled the room at the easiest excuse leaving Kamukura alone with him, that man himself seemed relaxed, he gave an easygoing smile. “You’re a quiet one aren’t you?”  
  
“...”  
  
“It’s those scientists they programmed you to be reactive rather than proactive, they weren’t interested in your development as a person just how you would react to stimuli under controlled circumstances. This is an academy really and they couldn’t stop being scientists, they’re even raising children scientifically now.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Ah, that’s right it’s rude not to make introductions. Do you know who I am…?”

“Teacher.”

“Good! That’s very accurate, are you by any chance a fan of mine?” That man crossed his legs, looking elated he closed his eyes and smiled. “It’s not that you can’t speak it’s just you don’t talk when it’s unnecessary, ah children should be seen and not heard do the scientists here really believe in some kind of outdated philosophy like that?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Ah, that look you’re giving me I can tell ‘what does that old man want from me?’ Such a rebellious look are you going through your rebellious stage already? Those scientists were right you really do grow fast.”  
  
“...” He had not made any expression at all. It was more like this apparently carefree man was carrying on a one sided conversation.  
  
“I’m doing what any adult should do. It’s the job of adults to raise up the next generation of children, right?”  
  
“...”  
  
“If those scientists had their way, you wouldn’t be taught anything besides talent. There’s no reason for you to develop an ego, to think for yourself, that’s why I wanted to ask you these things. What do you think of the intersection between talent and fate?”  
  
“...”

“Put simply, do you think that human life is already set in stone at birth, and simply cannot be resisted? That you are either born talented or untalented, due to some internal components you are born with? Do you believe there is such a rule?”  
  
“...”  
  
“In your case, we had to kill you and give birth to a new you in order to create that thing called talent. It would have been impossible for us to give the old you a talent even with 100 years of experimentation, you had to be reborn.”

“...”  
  
“Would you mind being quiet for a moment to hear me out, just for a little?”    
  
“...”  
  
“Yeah, it’s a funny joke I know. A long time ago, yes, it’s a story from about sixteen years ago. That girl appeared before me, out of the blue. To my surprise, she was the same type of human as me. She had the same eyes. In that moment, I knew I wasn’t alone in the world. I was happy.”  
  
“...”  
  
“That’s right. Till I met her, I was all alone in this world. No one else could see the sights I see. No one else could hear the things I could hear, but even alone as I was people were begging me for help.”

“...”  
  
“You’re the same aren’t you? You’re going to become the world’s salvation, it was the reason you were born, when you leave here you’ll have the ability to help the entire world. You can labor the rest of your life for world peace.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I was like that too. I tried to be a more charitable person. I'm not lying. B But, that’s why I was sad, because every part of my being rejected her. As much as I admired her, I was afraid of her. The one person who could see the same sights as me, rejected me. What? A question for me? Please.”

“...”  
  
“If the results in creating with me were perfect, why are you meddling with the experiment? Why are you tainting the result?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Oh, you’re right, you’re right, you are the perfect prototype. ‘Why am I trying to add something else onto perfection, why am I talking to you right now?’ Why, indeed. That’s still a secret. Come on. Do you read mystery novels by skipping straight to the ending.”  
  
  
“...Tedious”  
  
“What’s this? Don’t be mad at me come on. Well, let me answer like this: Does the concept of fate exist in this world?” In his hand, he was tossing up and down a rubix cube. “Is what you were born as, is talent,  a rule that dictates the rest of your life? I wish to confirm these things. I want you to confirm them as well. With me. Let’s run our own experiment, Izuru-chan.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Yes. The two of us will search together, to see whether talent truly exists.Asking a fake talent like you to prove whether talent is the real deal, that’s a cruel irony to point out isn’t it, haha. Still, I hope you get to meet her one day, that girl who was also born to be mankind’s salvation, not in a lab, but in a hospital like any other normal child. I hope that girl welcomes you by her side so you can see the same sights I once saw. Well, not too bad is it? Let us confirm together the fates of the talented.”  
  
To this day that man’s words echoed in his mind. _“I’m the only one that will acknowledge you. I’ the only one that will look in the eye. You know why the rest won’t even make eye contact at you? They’re all ticks. They inherently sense their inferiority, so they look away in fear, or turn their noses up at you in disgust. If you let them continue to scurry around in your shadow, one day they’ll all gang up on you and devour you, suck out your insides until there’s nothing left but a shrieveled up empty shell.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“...”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Oh my, oh my, they already did that to you didn’t they? That was so rude of me.”_ _  
_

He said those words again and again. _“I’m the only one that will look you in the eye.”_ Despite the strangely distant tone that man spoke in, like a creature trying to mimic human speech rather than human communicating Kamukura did not sense any lies or malice in those words.  
  
Yet, when those eyes were looking at him he could not shake the feeling. They were razor sharp owl eyes staring at him down from above, the owl eyed man was looking at him like another bug that would soon be snatched away in his talons.

  
That man stopped playing with his rubix cube idly, and placed it right in Kamukura’s hand instead. “Let’s talk again, my son. Oh, if you meet my other son, be sure to play nice with him and treat him kindly.”

“...?”  
  
“Oh, love? Were you confused by love? Raising a child without love what the adults doing these days? Though I’m no better, haha. The only one that can share the same sights as you, the only one who can look into your world, and see your sky,  that’s love.”

In the present as these these images from the past uncontrollably entered his mind once more all the while he stared above at the blue sky. It was an entirely artificial and fake sky, and yet he could not help but wonder if Nagito was staring up at the same sky as him right at this moment, if it looked the same through his eyes.  
  
“You done having anime flashbacks yet? We have work to do.” Enoshima Junko said staring through a pair of binoculars.  
  
“That’s a lie on two accounts, number one this world is not an anime we deliberated on that and already decided two arcs ago in the Ajimu arc, and number two you’ve never done any work in your life.” Izuru spat back out with her, without even looking back as his eyes were still fixated far away on the sky above him.

Enoshima Junko turned her eyes on something else in that moment, but he had long since stopped wondering what kinds of things were in the center of her wicked eyes. To be the apple of that princess’s eyes was certainly a curse.

 

😈

 

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu looked at the pencil sketch drawings that were hanging off of Komaeda’s wall. One such drawing was of a small white haired boy, holding hands with a boy who had such long black hair that he looked like the grudge child.  
  
“Oh, these are good. I didn’t even know you had a hobby besides creeping on people and following them around all day.” Fuyuhiko said, reaching to remove the drawing off the wall.  
  
Komaeda moved faster than Fuyuhiko had ever seen him before, and snatched it away from the wall, and then crumpled up the drawing and shoved it in his mouth. “It’sh called human obshervashion, one-” Komaeda said mouth still full, before he spat out the paper into the waste basket. “And two that was just a rough sketch even a child could do that much. Please apologize for the sake of actual artists who have something to create and contribute to the world everywhere.”  
  
Fuyuhiko knew that nearly anything he said could set off one of Komaeda’s rambly moods and it was usually better to just ride them out, but at this moment he was particularly baffled. “Jeez, learn to take a compliment.”  
  
“I don’t want to steal compliments when I haven’t done anything praiseworthy, I’m not a thief.” Komaeda said briefly, before he picked up again the tray he had just been returning to the room with before he saw Kirigiri and Fuyuhiko snooping around in his room.  
  
He laid the tray on the top of a kotatsu table he kept in the middle of the room. Technically it was spring and he should have put such furniture into storage already, but Komaeda was the type to be cold all year round no matter what the weather was outside. The children sat in a ring around the center table.  
  
Kirigiri took her sea and blew the steam off of it, before drinking it. “You could have put more sweetener in this. I dislike bitter things.”  
  
“Then you should really do something about that tongue of yours.” Komaeda replied, no trace of bitterness present in the smile on his face.  
  
Fundamentally, he and Kirigiri had never gotten along and Komaeda did not know why. Truth be told he had always been a fan of the mystery genre as well, it was the only kind of novel he liked to read besides what was regarded by everybody else as must read classic literature. He also enjoyed mystery games where the mechanics were based around the player character solving a puzzle pre-determined by the game designer.  
  
The entire world was like a puzzle that he could not solve, but in the realm of video games he could manage, control and solve things on a much smaller scale. Of course he was not that invested in video games, they were just a fun childish distraction, to be put away in the toy chest when they were finished.  
  
If Komaeda had to guess why Kirigiri did not like him, and this was not something he felt as he was terrible at reading the faces of others, but rather something he deduced. It seemed like when she looked at Komaeda, she was disappointed for some reason, because she was comparing him to someone else.  
  
Perhaps Kirigiri had a childhood friend that he resembled. A childhood friend that had always been with her since the age of two, that seemed to be a common trope.

Either way he had wanted to hold the meeting if he was going to be forced to play mystery solving gang of teenagers (If this were buffy they would be called the scooby gang but Komaeda did not think he was nearly cool enough to be buffy) with Fuyuhiko and Kirigiri he could at least do it without making a mess at his own house that he would have to clean up later.  
  
However, Kirigiri explained cooly as she sipped her tea. “My father is tight on cash so the two of us live alone in a small apartment I doubt there’d be room for the three of us.”  
  
Kyoko hated the name Kirigiri because her father had been born a talentless son, in a clan of detectives who valued detective work over family ties. He was thrown out by his father, only to be invited back in when his daughter showed some signs of natural intuition. However, rather than allow the man who abused him to abuse his daughter, he took her by the hand and led her away from her grandfather, even if it meant the two of them being cut off from all of the clan’s resources and having to survive on their own.  
  
“I’m a little bit of a daddy’s girl, so I don’t want to trouble my father any more than necessary.”  
  
Fuyuhiko had sided with Kirigiri this time, and Komaeda could understand why. After all Fuyuhiko was born to a family of crimminals, and Kirigiri was born to a family of detectives, but somehow despite being on opposite sides both families had treated their children as nothing more than vessels to carry on their lineage, giving them little chance to escape the circumstances of their birth. They were both born with the curse known as talent, it was only their family members Fuyuhiko’s sister, and Kirigiri’s father that valued them as people that saved them.

“My father is not worth much money, or extraordinary in any way, but he raised me as a daughter first before a detective and that’s why, I despise detectives, and the name Kirigiri.”

“I’m sorry Kyoko-san, if I could I’d erase all talent from the face of the earth for causing you such trouble.” Komaeda spoke again his true sentiment. Even if it was only one sided, he wanted to sympathize with her, he wanted to understand her circumstances he had no malice at all for this person tormented by talent.  
  
“Komaeda it’s… it’s fine thank you. You know this is the first time you’ve said you wanted to help someone and I’ve genuinely believed you.” Kirigiri said as she set her tea down and then slid the legs she was sitting on out from underneath herself to stand up.  
  
“Eh…?” Komaeda did not consider himself a liar. He wished he was a liar, he got into trouble so many times for being overly truthful and voicing his most unpleasant thoughts. “Why is that?”  
  
“It’s because you’re such a helpless guy.” Kirigiri said.  
  
“Awe that’s mean.”  
  
“I mean it’s mean but it’s honest at least. There ain’t nothing wrong with being helpless anyway, specially if you got others around you to help you. What’s the point of being strong all on your own, you’ll just be left alone in the end?”  Fuyuhiko said as he playfull shoved Komaeda’s shoulder.  
  
Kirigiri made it to the closet. “Komaeda, why do you have such a complex lock on this closet door? Are you hiding something?”  
  
“No…” Komaeda said softly as he scrambled up onto his feet from underneath the kotatsu. “No no no no no, nobody’s allowed to see what’s inside there, don’t look please.” Komaeda stumbled a few more feet before he tripped forward and fell at Kirigiri’s feet. “I don’t want to be exposed...”  
  
“Even the world’s greatest detective would have trouble unraveling you. What exactly are you saying?” Kirigiri said as she paused letting her hand simply hang in the air.  
  
“Well, that’s good because I don’t want to be unraveled.” Komaeda was already like red yarn, stretched so long that it had lost its shape and become frayed, he did not want to be further rolled out until he lost ball form and was just a messy pile of yarn. Wait, why was he suddenly thinking of unraveling a ball of yarn? Why was that the first thing that came to mind? Could it be he was a cat after all?

  
“He’s probably just hiding his porn in there. I wouldn’t look inside unless you really want to know what type of guys Komaeda is into.”  
  
“Kuzuryuu-kun!” Komaeda whined back at him.  
  
“What I’m sticking up for you dude. There’s no way I’d ever let anybody see my stash of samurai babes I have in hiding.”  
  
“You boys are so illogical.” Kirigiri said as she sat back down, blowing one of her stray lilac hairs out of her face to convey her annoyance.  
  
“Rather than just boys, I think it’s people themselves who are at their basic nature illogical.” Komaeda commented always having to get the last word in.  
  
Fuyuhiko slammed his fist on the table. “Can you two quit bickering? We’re not hanging out over golden week, we’re trying to solve a murder together? How come I’m the only one reacting to this situation am I the only one here with emotions!” He yelled at the other two.  
  
Kirigiri’s face stayed exactly the same, and she said in the same tone of voice. “Of course I have emotions, my heart is lit afire with vengeance, and I’m determined to stop at nothing to stop these terrorists. Can’t you tell?”  
  
Both boys blinked and then looked at each other for a moment and decided it was nicer to just leave her question unanswered.  
  
“Rather than the three of us attempting to handle this alone, I think we should consult with a real detective, an adult. I can request for one at the library.”  
  
“The library?” Komaeda asked.  
  
“Yes, at the library there’s a kiosk for the detective’s association. It’s a database that ranks all available detectives, we should be able to come into contact with one that way.”  
  
“Detective’s association? Umm, Kyoko-san I’m not sure such a thing exists. That sounds like something you’d find in an anime, should we go looking for espers, time travelers or aliens to go solve our problem?”

“If you want to go back to school by the end of Golden Week, this is the best way forward.” Kirigiri said, looking directly at Komaeda in a way he could not shirk away from, which made him doubly uncomfortable because as much as he loved observing others he hated to be observed.  
  
“That’s… that’s all I want. To go back to that school with everybody else.” Komaeda said. He did not enjoy holiday breaks at all, he was the opposite of most children in that his only happy memories were of his time at school. So, he was convinced to go along with Kirigiri’s longshot of a plan.  
  
As Fuyuhiko, Kirigiri, and Komaeda left though locking up his house behind him, Komaeda was filled with a strange sense of foreboding. They had failed to make it to the beach, they had failed to make it to the zoo, he almost worried that the library would simply cease to exist before they could even make it to the building. _A story where the protagonist does a lot but in the end his actions are ultimately meaningless._  
  
A few minutes after Komaeda had left his room alone, Junko and Kamukura were standing in the middle of his room having easily picked the lock. Kamukura went immediately to the closet, looking at the locked door. “A secret that he would not even share with Zenkichi.”  
  
“I didn’t know you wanted to see his porn so badly, loverboy.” Junko snickered behind him.  
  
“Amazing, as loved by talent as you are and that is the best insult you could come up with for me in that moment.”  
  
“Boo hoo, you’re going to make me cry tears of boredom from how no fun you are. You could at least banter with me a little bit. Come on poserboy, hit me where it hurts.”  
  
“Cleverness and wit are wasted on a person like you, just like love is entirely wasted on you. Everything spent on a girl like you goes to waste, eventually, really. You’re like a sieve, no matter what you fill yourself up with eventually it all falls out and you’ll find yourself empty again. Your current obsession with Kumagawa-senpai is just yet another in a long line of drug addictions with diminishing returns.”

“Awe, you’re not going to woo me with that nihilism. That ship has already sailed.”  
  
“This conversation is tedious.”  
  
“That’s what you always say when you have nothing else to say!” Junko snapped back at him.  
  
However, Kamukura had already undone the complicated lock that Komaeda put on the door easily, and pried the closet open to see whatever it was that Komaeda considered such a forbidden secret desire that he would keep it hidden even in this world constructed of his desires and his delusions.

😈

 

“There’s no… but I thought there was…” Kirigiri had spoken so confidently about the existence of a detective’s organization, but not only did no kiosk exist, when they borrowed the library’s computer they could find no trace of it online.  
  
“Maybe it’s like a secret detective’s organization…” Fuyuhiko tried to suggest helpfully.  
  
“Why would a detective organization need to be secret? They’re not criminals, they seek the truth.” Kirigiri said, repeating her somewhat idyllic view of detectives, the people she claimed she hated the most. Angry, the girl stomped her boots and turned around on her heel right then. Komaeda and Fuyuhiko combined had never seen the girl show so much emotion at once, so they both watched wondering if that small disagreement had been what Kirigiri would consider an argument, because she never really got close enough to others to argue.

 _Not that I’m one who should be talking._ Fuyuhiko was immediately shushed when his phone went off in the library, from his sister who seemed to call him every fifteen minutes now that he was let out from the hospital, so he had to excuse himself outside to take the call. He pushed Komaeda to go talk to Kirigiri instead.  
  
“Why me…?”  
  
“Well, you’re the one who kind of just pisses her off just by existing.”  
  
“Listen, if I’m also annoyed by my existence, if I could stop my existence I would.”  
  
“Would you stop saying shit like that? You’re making me worried you’re going to disappear the moment I take my eyes off of you, so go make nice with KIrigiri now. They’re picking off loners right so it’s better if we all stick together and get along.”  
  
“I can’t believe I’m getting lectured by a yakuza on doing what’s best for the collective whole of society. Though as a hater of talent, I suppose my beliefs lean more collectivism as my desire is to be one of the crowd-” However by the time he had started to philosophize Fuyuhiko had already pushed him forward and turned his back away. Komaeda tilted his head to the side and turned towards Kirigiri. “Okay… I’ll just go do that then.” Even though he did not particularly want to, it was easy for him to just react to what others wanted of him, since anything he decided on his own would probably go wrong simply for the fact that he was the one who made that decision.  
  
It was like luck, or fate, or something, or perhaps it was just him being bad at being a person. He looked at Fuyuhiko from a distance and saw the various faces he was making in response to his sister nagging him over the phone. _It must be nice, to have someone who would miss you if you disappeared from this world like that. Even if Kuzuryuu-kun dies he’ll leave a trace behind in his sister._ _  
  
_

Thinking of family something he had never really experienced as he only felt like a guest that was taking advantage of the HItoyoshi’s kindness, he went to find Kirigiri. “Your dad…” He asked trying to bring up a topic that she would like as she faced away from him staring at the bookshelves. “What’s it like living with just him every day?”  
  
“You know my mother died of sickness when she was very young, I don’t have a mother, any siblings, or a thing called extended family but my father when I told him I was sad because my mother would never be able to fix the braids in my hair again, learned to do it himself so he could do it every morning for me.” Kirigiri said, as she ran her fingers through her lilac hair again. Komaeda thought it would have been a lonely thing if she instead had to learn how to tie such intricate braids all on her own because she did not have a father taking care of her. “Hey, Komaeda-kun. What were those drawings on the wall, of you and the black haired boy…?”  
  
“N-nothing important. They’re just from a dream I’ve had over and over again.”  
  
“What dream?”  
  
“Are you sure you want to hear about it? Dreams come from my mind technically, and everything that comes from my mind is inherently broken.”  
  
“It’s fine Komaeda-kun, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to hear it. I’m not like you who circles around the point all day and still misses it.”  
  
“All that circling is me trying…” Komaeda said passively, and then decided to just let it go like usual. It was easier if he was a sieve that accepted everything everybody said about him, that way he could deal with that thing called humanity without having to confront a single one of them, without having to lose his place in the crowd. “I have a dream where I’m a normal boy. Utterly unremarkable.”  
  
“I thought you were a normal boy, or at least unremarkable in every way.”  
  
“Well, even more normal. I don’t even have good or bad luck, or a face, and yet there’s still a boy who finds me, and plays with me every day. I’m a normal boy, with a normal childhood friend, and we play normal games together, I’m sure we’ll grow up normally together but because that person found me, I feel special.”  
  
“Are you sure it’s a dream…?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Dreams are sometimes influenced by reality. Perhaps there really was a best friend you had like that, that you forgot about.”  
  
“I… there was a person I forgot about but… they’ve been mean to me lately.” Komaeda remembered his stolen wallet, the punch in the gut he received, and the way that man said _boring_ in an emotionless voice as if summarizing his existence.  
  
“They’re probably mad you forgot about the, so they’re acting so cold to shut those emotions out. I mean, imagine if being around somebody just made them happy and you always wanted to be by their side, just that was enough for you but then suddenly you had to watch them find happiness with someone else.” Kirigiri closed the book she held open and replaced it on the shelf. “Realizing that somebody’s perfect world didn’t include you in it. Then, watching two people become ‘each other’s worlds’, findind a happy world without you, watching them find happiness in each other from the sidelines. That must be an incredibly lonely thing I imagine.”  
  
Kyoko’s face did not change at all, nor did her tone of voice waver in any way and yet for some reason Komaeda felt physically heavier just stnading around her, as if Kirigiri was weighed down by an incredible sadness. _Kirigiri must have severe abandonment issues… but that doesn’t make any sense because her father chose her over being a detective._ “Kyoko-san, are you talking from experience?”  
  
“Uhm… I’m not sure. I think in the past, I had something like a childhood friend, maybe we pinky promised to get married but I was the only one who was serious about it. The next time I met him he already had a girlfriend. Or… maybe it wasn’t a childhood friend, but a first friend I… I can’t remember.” Kirigiri gripped her face, keeping her head away from Komaeda still. The face she made in that moment, that she concealed, was probably a mystery she would lock away deep in her heart where no detective could solve it. “I’m whining about being left behind, but I forgot about somebody who was so important to me and continued living my happy life. I’m the cold one aren’t I?”

“...” Komaeda did not want to answer that question. He did not want to affirm or deny any part of her. He felt too much weight by the situation already. He did not want to give from others or take from them. So, he simply made a quiet, fumbling excuse to go check on Fuyuhiko again and left. He heard the sound of Kirigiri removing another book from the shelf.  
  
However, because he was in such a hurry to leave, he did not notice the sound of that book falling and crashing to the ground, because of the sudden disappearance of the girl holding it. It was another sound that was devoured by the silence of the library.

 

😈

 

Just as Izuru and Junko reached the library together, the ground shook again. Just as before, the building became a distortion, and grew in size until its top became indistinguishable from the heavens.

“Really? Another event like this. Can this world get any more annoying? Wait, it was designed by Komaeda-senpai of course it can.” Junko immediately complained, tapping her heels in frustration.  
  
“I thought you were the one who wanted to see unexpected things and interesting twists.” Izuru said, unable to resist cutting down Enoshima’s ego at any oppurtunity. It was like a massive rose bush after all, if he did not cut it, its thorns would wrap around everything.  
  
“I don’t like interesting things when they get in the way of what I want.”  
  
“What do you want exactly? That’s an important question that’s been left unanswered. Come on Enoshima, you’re always begging me to philosophize with you.”  
  
“This isn’t even about me. We’re here to retrieve your lost friends, I’m just trying to get lost property.”  
  
“I’m sure Kumagawa-senpai is very flattered you think of him that way.”  
  
“He better be!” Junko snapped at him, raising her voice again. All of the other people, the imaginary shadows of real people, the blue faceless ones Komaeda had populated his world with had disappeared so there was no danger to her suddenly yelling except that it was really annoying to Izuru.  
  
Their constant verbal sparring was like a game where Junko continually tried to get him angry enough to actually do something to her, only to have Medaka, or Matsuda come and break up their fight. When he gave into his anger he lost, and he had been losing a lot. Which was good for the slow process of regaining his emotions, but he wanted to feel more emotions than just annoyance at Junko.  
  
“Really, I feel bad for any book where you’re the main character. An aimless girl like you is never going to find any consistent motivation or characterization.”  
  
“My consistent characterization is that I’m way cooler than lame nerds like you!”  
  
“Oh no she called me a nerd. Whatever shall I do.”  
  
“There’s nothing you can do. You’ll never escape from how lame you are. Suffer in despair forever.” Junko however threatening to go full evil monologue suddenly lost interest in that and dialed it back. “Hey, hey, hey, so is Kirigiri-san the one creating that anomaly? It’d be great if she had some kind of repressed other self  that I could sink my teeth into.”  
  
“I thought you were only here for Kumagwa-senpai. Well, he will obviously never be enough for you so I can’t help but feel sorry for him again.”  
  
“Oh like you’re being boyfriend of the year to Komaeda right now, tall, dark, and tsundere hold the dere so it’s just tsuntsun.”  
  
“Digressing. It’s not Kirigiri who created that in fact…” Izuru’s entire body started to flicker with red squares, smaller red pixels bleeding from his form as his eyes focused on the distorted building above them. “Kirigiri just disappeared, I’m getting no reading from her at all.”  
  
“Huh? Then somebody else is messing with it? Komaeda, Fuyuhiko…? They’re the only ones left.”  
  
“Neither of them.”  
  
“That fakey fake me?”  
  
“The AI is still in the box.”Izuru moved his hands towards his head, forming a gun with his fingers that he pointed at the side of his head. “The only possibility is that someone is interfering on the outside.”  
  
“Who? Nobody designed this program except you, Gekkougahara whose a minor character, matsuda, and most importantly me.”

  
“I’m going to investigate. You find Kirigiri-san.”  
  
“Wait are you serious? You’re just going to leave me alone here? Your entire purpose is to be the kill joy and the grumpy babysitter that stops me from destroying this whole mission on a whim. How come everybody forgets their roles but me?”  
  
“She’s your classmate, but fine if you want have somebody else snatch her away from you and be responsible for her final demise.” Izuru flexed his thumb, and suddenly a red vector shot straight through his head. In the next moment his entire body disappeared into red squares, that slowly pixelated away.  
  
Junko wiped off her shoulder, even though none of the pixelated dust that flew from the explosion was even real. “Ugh, fine! It’s not because of what you said, I just decided to do it suddenly on a whim, because I’m always changing my mind that’s my thing!” Junko yelled before realizing she was yelling at thin air. “He’s already gone what am I doing… whatever…”  
  
In the next moment she kicked the door open with her heel again. Just like the hospital had, the library extended out in front of her. This time rather than the walls, it was the shelves of books themselves that grew, and twisted around. She hesitated for a moment and what she saw laid out in front of her looked like a maze constructed entirely of book shelves.  
  
She saw Komaeda Nagito standing at the edge of that maze too, and immediately ran past him. As she did she pushed him out of the side on purpose, causing him to fall. “Out of my way loser!”  
  
Komaeda and Fuyuhiko had noticed the disappearance of Kirigiri awhile ago, and had run back into the library to search for her, only to find it entirely empty. They split up and Komaeda had gotten lost from Fuyuhiko, his sense of reality, and his sense of direction was never that good in the first place so he felt hopelessly lost in this.  
  
_Hopeless._ _  
_ _Funny way to phrase that._ _  
_ _I can’t be less of something that I never had to begin with._

Suddenly, there was a man in front of him. He wore a white lab coat with a black and white suit underneath him, and his hair was slicked back like an adult’s. In his hands he had a piece of paper, he uncrumpled it and smoothed it out. “This is a nice drawing of you and Kamukura.”  
  
“Kamukura…I drew myself with a person named Kamukura?”  
  
“Of course you would. You were best friends after all.”  
  
“Best friends.” The word itself, the idea that he would become close to someone, they both sounded equally fake to him.  
  
“No, you were even more than best friends.”  
  
“More than that…” Komaeda said obliviously as he tried to imagine that kind of closeness. _Best friends forever maybe? But… forever and eternity don’t exist._ The only concept he had of love was the kind he read in story books. _A person learns he’s dying and wants to find love before he dies so he’ll know he left at least one thing behind on this earth. Why would I read a sad book with a premise like that if I’m happy?  
_  
“You poor lost child. Haven’t you had enough of dreaming? Don’t you want to know the truth about who you really are?”  
  
“Nobody knows me, not even me. There is no truth.”  
  
“What a post modernist stance to take. How interesting.”  
  
“But… I don’t know what’s been happening lately. I just… don’t want to be involved in it anymore.”  
  
That man turned around slipping his hands into the pockets of his coat.  As he did the twin tails of his labcoat trailed behind him. “That’s too bad. If you had chosen to learn about yourself, you could have learned about him as well, he’s an important part of you.”  
  
The sketched out drawing was tossed aside, it caught at the wind and fell at his feet. Komaeda merely stared at it, not sure if any of this in front of him was real. He felt like it was a dream, like he had suddenly fallen asleep at the library. “But… I don’t want to know about myself. Even if it means I would be less lonely in the end, it’s fine, I can deal with the loneliness just fine.”  
  
When he finished saying that though the man’s silhouette disappeared, and Komaeda was left there alone, with the drawing of his dreams. He remained nothing more than a boy with his head in the clouds, as that was all he was comfortable being anymore.

 

😈

 

Enoshima Junko ran forward. As she did she saw two arrows on the floor pointing in different directions, the one pointing where she had come from had a black and white bear symbol on it, the one pointing where she was running had a pink and white rabbit symbol on it instead.  
  
As she continued to run through something, she felt the sensation like she was running up against a wall, and then suddenly pushed through it. Her eyes looked to the periphery and she saw on her side, two red curtains were drawing apart trailing behind her. She must have just ran through them.  
  
She stopped a moment, paused and confused. Her head was entirely empty, a void, like a sieve as Kamukura described it, there was nothing she could hold onto, no consistent motivation she could have. She could not even summon enough feelings to like or dislike anything in particular. Her eyes grew dull for a moment, then suddenly they sharpened and narrowed as if she remembered something.  
  
_That’s right. This is a library. I’m looking for a book. I'm late. I'm late for a very important date. Haha just kidding this isn't an alice in wonderland allusion, gotta get that book._ Enoshima Junko had come here for Kirigiri Kyoko but almost as immediately as she had started running she had completely forgotten that purpose.  
  
Just as she had forgotten her, Kirigiri Kyoko appeared at the corners of her vision. The library was not one floor, but many, lined with shelves after shelves. Staircases bobbed up and down, shifting between shelves. As Junko’s eyes trailed the horizon she could see great gears turning in the background, and long wires holding the delicate construction of the library into place, as if the entire thing was a hanging gardens.  
  
One floor above her, Kirigiri was running. The moment she had appeared in this library she had been consumed with the same thought as well. _I had almost forgotten it. I almost forgot to look for that book._

Both girls in boots were desperately running with everything they had. Despite their being shelves lined up infinitely in every direction there was not a single book on any of the shelves. They were entirely empty. _  
_ _  
_ _I have to hurry or the brief light of the stars will die out._ Kirigiri thought as she turned the corner and climbed another staircase.  
  
_I have to hurry or the moon will rise._ Enoshima thought as she reached the top of a staircase and ran down another line of shelves. There were ladders rolling around the shelves seemingly moving on their own.

 _If I don't hurry the night will melt me to shadows._ Kyoko thought as she finally came to a stop, in front of a shelf with two single books on it.  
  
Running form the opposite direction, Enoshima Junko arrived at the same time. The both of them immediately grabbed for the book, they did not look at or recognize one another. They both at the same time opened their own individual books and flipped through the pages.  
  
Enoshima Junko’s book was empty.  
Kirigiri Kyoko’s book was empty.  
  
There was not a single thing written in either book. Izuru said as much earlier, that he pitied any author that would write a story around her, that would try to find a center in something of her devoid of substance, devoid of gravity, devoid of presece, empty, a void…Enoshima Junko stared into the book, her red nails on both sides digging into the white pages. _This is me. A book without anything written in it. This is my story, nothing at all._

 _I’m not a princess at all._ _  
_ _I’m just a witch._ _  
_ _I’ll melt._ _  
_ _If I cry, My tears will melt me._ _  
_ _I’m scared…_ _  
_ Scared of nothing at all, there was nothing at all for her to be scared about because she was entirely empty, because nothing of this world had substance to her. Yet, she acted afraid. She had the audacity to pretend to be afraid, to pretend that part of her was human enough to fear all the missing parts, to mourn what she was bereft of.  
  
Kirigiri Kyoko simply dropped the book falling to her knees. She threw the book to the side not wanting to look at it anymore.  
Junko suddenly slammed the open book hard against the wall. She pulled out a pen from the pocket in her skrit and wrote over and over again. _Kumagawa Misogi. Kumagawa Misogi. Kumagawa Misogi. Kumagawa Misogi._ Something to fill the pages. Even if it was obsession. Even if it was delusion. When she had finished filling two hole pages, she drew a sloppy heart all around the names.  
  
Just as she had turned the page, a voice spoke up from above. “What an interesting reaction to that empty book..” He said, and then slid down one of the many ladders that were sliding back and forth. “It’s no good to violate the books you borrow from the library, my dear girl, or were you perhaps looking for a different book?”  
  
“The Stranger by Albert Camus.” Enoshima Junko suddenly spoke without realizing it.  
  
“Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Cristie.” Kirigiri Kyoko said, from behind her. Prompting Junko to finally turn her head and notice the other girl.

 _Ah._ She was here to find Kirigiri, how could she have forgotten about that. She looked down on the floor to see the black and white tiles had become replaced with pink and white, that same rabbit symbol repeating over and over again. Then suddenly a man wearing a white lab coat, with a paron pulled over it stood in front of her.  
  
“Surely, you must have been looking for something important to come to this place. Even if I were to die trying, I’ll still assist you. That’s foreshadowing of course, haha.”  
  
“What a weirdo…” Enoshima Junko muttered.

“Books are important you know. There are two forms of consciousness, the kind that perceives the world, and the kind that makes sense of those raw perceptions and forms a cohesive narrative for your mind to understand. So, it’s wrong to say that fiction imitates reality, rather people write fiction according to how they already see reality. To people, everything is about narratives.”  
  
“Umm… not that I hate random philosophizing but I feel like there was something I came here to do.” Enoshima Junko’s mind always functioned perfectly, too perfectly, she had never dealt with her brain being in such a fog.  
  
Kirigiri followed along more readily.  
  
“If you’ve forgotten it then I’ll help you remember. Assisting lost children, is the job of adults. Ah. Here.” He reached forward and suddenly on the shelf there was an empty book. “Here it is your story, the one you have sought.”  
  
Enoshima looked at the nametag hanging from his apron. It read “Fukurou” she was pretty sure. An appropriate name for such an owl eyed man.

Junko heard the sound of curtains receding again. Suddenly from above, two spotlights fell one on the spiky haired man, and the other on her. She looked up and saw that there was no ceiling on this library, but above them instead of stars there were stagelights. It was equally as glaring to look at however, so she had to close her eyes.  
  
“There was once a girl like star or a black hole that pulled everyone into her gravity. A girl from which no light could escape.”

**😈Flashback. A flashback is happening. A typical story, that day she met her childhood friend since at two years old. The childhood friends to lovers trope in action. That girl planned it from the moment she met him. 😈**

Matsuda rushed in the rain holding an umbrella in his hand. His father was working late again at the clinic, and his mother had almost cried from the loneliness and worry. The only way he could make her smile was to promise to bring an umbrella to his father’s work for him. She was afraid if he came home late without an umbrella he might get lost in the rain.

He ran as fast as his three year old legs would carry. There were a few adults in the way clogging up the street, and in a hurry to keep his promise to his mother, to make her smile he scowled at all of them wishing they would just get off the sidewalk if they were going to get in the way.  
  
As he ran in the rain though and tuned out the rest of the world there was something that he could not ignore. He heard the crying of a young girl. He turned around and saw a girl had slipped and fallen in the rain and no adult had stopped to help her. Matsuda could imagine himself crying all alone like that, not a single adult able to help him. It was his worst fear.

“Mukuuuuuuuro, you big meanie! You were supposed to bring me an umbrella! Where are yoooooouuuu?” She cried out.  
  
Yasuke had no idea who this Mukuro was, but whoever she was it must have been someone she was close to. Someone she could not live without. Just like him and his mother. His father seemed to play the role of father perfectly, and yet somehow even at three years old he could tell there was nothing genuine about that man. However, Matsuda did not want to displease him either as it might upset mother.  
  
He looked at his father’s clinic in the distance and the crying girl right in front of him and made a decision right then. He opened the umbrella over her head and held it above her to shield her from the rain. “It’ll be okay. Did you get lose someone important to you? I’m sure we can find them.”  
  
Yasuke said, as he held out a hadn to her. The tiny girl, with red hair in small pigtails reached forward and wrapped her hand around his.  
  
“Upupupupu, holding a boy’s hand.”  
  
“Your laugh is weird…”    
  
As they walked together, suddenly Matsuda walked around her carefully keeping the umbrella over her head the entire time, until he was walking on the opposite side of her between her in the road. “Don’t worry, even if the water splashes up I’ll protect you.” he said, before wondering about the scene he had seen a moment ago.”How come you weren’t with any adults?”  
  
“Adults are just stupid you know. I’m two years old and I’m already smarter than all of them. I can’t even imagine getting that old without realizing the inherent futility of life, how stupid can you get…?”  
  
“You say such weird things.” Matsuda repeated.  
  
He spent the rest of the day with the girl, and because of that he was late to delivering the umbrella to his fathr. WHen he got there, that man patted him on the head robotically. As he listened to the story his son told him he interrupted. “That girl, she probably fell and tripped on purpose to get your attention.”  
  
“No way, her knee was really scraped! She’s just a clumsy and kind of stupid girl”  
  
“You shouldn’t trust clumsy girls like that. You don’t know what they’ll break. It’s too bad you were late today though, I wanted to introduce you to a special girl, but another boy came in and snapped up all her attention. That’s too bad I thought my son and the son of a close family friend might get along and play together.”

Fukuro uclosed the book shut.  
  
As he finished the story, Kirigiri Kyoko spoke up behind the two of them. “What about me? What about my story?”  
  
Fukuro gave a shrug. He was trying to seem sympathetic at least. “Sorry but, unlike that girl you don’t have anything you could call a childhood friend. Those pages are blank for you.”  
  
"There has to be something!" Kirigiri stomped her foot down.   
  
Fukurou looked through the remaining pages. "Wow, you're a late bloomer aren't you." 

😈  **Flashback. I never allowed anybody to become too close then in my first year of high school there was someone who wanted to be my friend.** 😈  
  
"Can we finish this already...?" She sat in a library reading a book. This entire time, Makoto had been the one approaching her for every conversation. If it was getting close, it was entirely a result of their his efforts not hers.   
  
"Huh...? Finish...?"  
  
"If we truly want to trust each other, we must truly know each other. This is what you believe, isn't it?"  
  
"Well... yeah, but..."  
  
"I understand why you feel that way but... when it comes to me, I think you should probably give up."   
  
"What? Why?" 

  
"Because I don't have anything to talk to you about."  
  
"Does that mean... you don't trust me?"  
  
"... If you get too involved with someone, you're apt to lose any good judgement. I learned that lesson myself all too well. Personal experience is a ruthless teacher."   
  
"Personal experience?" Naegi Makoto took a step back, bringing his hand to his mouth. The boy looked terrified of the idea of hurting another person, or another person being hurt.  
  
That day, she had wanted him to keep asking her questions. She had been trying to push him away with the opposite of intentions. However, that day he simply stopped and gave her space like she had appeared she had wanted to. She wondered, if Makoto had been more bold, if she had been more direct, what would have happened?   
  
Probably nothing.   
  
"It was a pure love you had for him don't you think?" Fukurou asked slamming the book shut again. "A natural relationship that grew from friends, to trusted friends, to lovers, except you never reached that last step. I bet if you had been the one to confess Naegi would have chosen you right away but you never confessed why is that?"   
  
"Personal feelings get in the way of things."  
  
"It seems like Kumagawa-kun is to blame isn't he? Ever since he showed up everything is backwards. Yours and Makoto's love is the natural love that should have blossomed between hero and heroine and Ikusaba is merely meant to be a sympathetic one sided tragic love, and now it's all been reversed."   
  
"Don't... Don't talk about Ikusaba like that."   
  
Fukurou did not notice the resentment in her voice. He merely continued from where he had left off.   
  
  
😈  **Flashback. Mom’s sick and there’s nothing to do. He begged and begged the doctor to do something. 😈**

X rays were glowing on the wall the only light source in the room. The boy was only in his second year of primary school, and yet he was begging desperately, putting his head on the ground.  
  
“Please dad. I’ll do anything. You have to fix her. You’re a doctor aren’t you? Why can’t you do anything?”  
  
“It can’t be helped. It’s because of the disease you know.”  
  
“You already said that…” His voice squeaked in a pathetic whine.

Then, the doctor leaned forward, his slicked back hair not moving at all even as he was nearly on the floor to whisper into his son’s ears. “That’s actually just a lie that the adults came up with. Their favorite words are ‘it can’t be helped’ It’s a euphemism for I don’t care. The truth is if I really wanted to save your mother I could, I just don’t. If the other adults really wanted to help you, you’d”  
  
“D-dad?”  
  
“I’ve already filed the paperwork. Your mom and I are splitting up and I’m taking custody of you away from her. You don’t have to play at being family with her anymore.”  
  
“P...play?”  
  
“You know like acting at a school play. Isn't it getting tiresome? I have to keep finding bruises on your body when I come home from working late, it’s better to just cut and run at this point. Oh, if we move away you’ll lose your one friend that’s true and there’ll be nobody to watch you when I’m working. Oh, I can just hire a babysitter or something. Don’t worry you’ll have other friends very soon. Lots of them. Come on.”  
  
He held out his hand, but Matsuda refused to take it.  
  
“Yasuke…? Do you want to be left behind? Come on, let’s go.”  
  
After his father left, Yasuke decided to live alone with his mother. Even when her fits of rof memory got worse and worse, he took it all not wanting to leave that woman behind. He stopped attending school, stopped going outside.  
  
It was like the whole rest of the world had forgotten about him. The only person who remembered knocked loudly, persistently outside of his door. “Yasuke-kuuuuun! Come to the park with me I want to build a sand castle.”  
  
Yasuke opened the door appearing through a crack. “I don’t have time to waste with weird girls like you.”  
  
“But you promised we’d build a sand castle! Where have you been lately, do I have to start stalking you or something?”  
  
“Just leave me alone. I have to watch over my mother.” He said as he slammed the door in front of her face.  
  
However, to the girl this was not a rejection. It was possible to the spoiled little girl who got everything that she wanted she did not even understand what a rejection was. A childish smile spread across her face as she whispered. “Chaaaaaaaance…”

Fukurou closed the book again. “I’m beginning to notice a pattern in these. Perhaps one more.” He said as he slid the book off the shelf.  
  
😈  **Flashback. The rabbit hutch at school, the girl and her sister who’s always following in her shadow. 😈**

“Mukuro, you like rabbits don’t you…?” Junko asked as the two of them sat at the rabbit hutch behind school. Mukuro was surprised because usually when they were both assigned a duty together Junko pushed all of the work onto Mukuro and then went off to play somewhere else.  
  
Her sister, not one for many words answered in a soft voice. “Yeah, I like them. They’re cute.”  
  
Junko suddenly grabbed Mukuro’s hand. Mukuro flinched as her sister never got that close unless she wanted to slap her, or forcefully drag her somewhere. However this time her sister slid something into her hands and removed them.  
  
Mukuro looked and saw a knife. The kind that the soldiers used in one of her favorite magazines. “I got you a present sis. Mom and dad forgot to get you anything for your birthday again, huh?”  
  
Mukuro gave no response. She had never received a present before, especially not one from Junko. The knife trembled in her hand, but Junko had already moved onto the next subject. She danced over the rabbit hutch and then opened the top, and kicked one of the doors until it fell open. “Hey, Mukuro. If you like rabbits so much you should see what’s inside of them. I bet their insiders are just as pretty as their outsides.”  
  
“I… I don’t want to. The rabbits didn’t do anything."  
  
“God, you’re really gonna do this huh? I can’t believe I even let you play with me anymore, I gave you a knife, and I even played with you like you asked and you still don’t understand me.”  
  
“I Junko… no. If it’s for you I can do it. I can do anything. I understand you! I do!” Mukuro drifted forwardd, she watched the rabbits hop helplessly out of the enclosure. One of them hopped near her foot just by coincidence. Her fingers tightened around the knife. “Sshsh… There’s a good boy. So soft, Come here.” Suddenly she crouched down, and dragged the knife through it, enough to spill out its organs inside out just like Junko had asked her too. The pure white was stained with blood red.  
  
Junko smiled at her sister. “Make sure you take care of the knife. The fat will dull the blade. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody that it was you who killed all the rabbits.” Junko said, crouching behind her and watching, as her sister’s eyes grew duller and duller through the repettitive killing. She was simply repeating the knife techniques she had read about in magazines, a true prodigy when it came to killing.  
  
Then, Junko had lied of course. She told everybody she could about how her sister had killed all the rabbits. Soon, a group of bullies confronted and pushed Mukuro down. They chanted liar at her again and again. Her sister was even further isolated, the only one she would have in the whole school was her.  
  
Enoshima Junko had been planning to take it slowly from rabbits on up, but suddenly that night there was a burglary in their house. She heard noises, footsteps that sounded unlike anybody else’s footsteps in her house and then laid in her bed. If she simply died in her sleep because a man broke in and killed a beautiful young girl, she was sure that would cause a lot of despair. Even as the door to her room slowly opened she did not move.  
  
However, the assailant quickly tripped. She heard  familiar set of foot steps, quiet, and unassuming a girl who only ever walked in a shadow. Then, she heard a noise that was so beautiful she was not sure Mukuro could have been the one making it. After that man tumbled forward, she heard the sound of a knife, entering and leaving flesh over and over again. _Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch._ It was a good fun noise, like somebody was playing with his insides like they were toys.  
  
She pretended to wake up suddenly and even gave a fake gasp. Her sister had used the knowledge she had acquired in books to protect her from a person breaking in by murdering him.  
  
The moment Mukuro had looked upon the body that had stopped moving more quickly than she had imagined, a strange kind of breeze blew within her heart.  
  
Junko did not yell at her sister like normally, rather she suddenly threw her arms around her sister and pulled her close, all the while a body leaked red in the background. Mukuro stared at her sister, and the body, utterly transfixed and yet at the same time shakily waving between the two of them.  
  
_My cold and distant sister feels so warm. She's never held me before.  Why? What have I done? Is it the despair of death? Because I killed someone strong? Because I was strong for her sake. Probably not… none of that matters for her… but still._

Her sister who almost never smiled to an abnormal extent, suddenly was smiling from ear to ear. “Hey, Mukuro like just now I thought of the perfect bonding activity, let’s go hide a body together.”

Fukuro slammed the book shut once more.  
  
Kirigiri asked once more. “Aren’t you going to tell my story?” She said, pointing to herself with her bare finger.  
  
Fukuro shook his head again trying to look sympathetic. “I’m sorry but you don’t have a sister. Don’t you remember now?”  
  
Kirigiri looked at her own hands. Entirely unharmed, the hands of a normal girl, open, warm, welcome, right these were not her hands. Perhaps she had something like a sister once, but that person had said this to her. _You’re so cool. You’re a born detective. But maybe one day… you’ll start to doubt yourself like I do. If that ever happens, try to stay pure, the way you are now. I just wanted to tell you that one thing._

 Fukurou reopened his book. "I suppose you do have something akin to a little brother." 

😈  **Shuichi Saihara, he follows me aroud like my shadow. There's nobody whose ever been there for me so much, but he too... 😈**

  
The two of them wee walking along together, Shuichi walking behind her as usual. He seemed to be too timid to truly walk by anyone's side.   
  
He put his hand on his chin gazing to the side. "Ah, Kirigiri. There's something that I've been meaning to ask you."  
  
"...What is it?"  
  
"You were a detective before you even entered high school, correct?"  
  
"Yes... it's been years since I first entered this line of work."   
  
"It's been that long? I thought I was young to start working as a detective... You're incredible Kirigiri ... I feel kinda bad now. An apprentice like me doesn't deserve to share the title of Ultimate Detective with you."  
  
"But you're here because Hope's Peak Academy recognizes your accomplishments, yes?"  
  
"I... don't know about that. I just solved a case by chance..."  
  
"Be that as it may, you still grabbed hold of the truth and solved the case, didn't you? No one, not even you can deny that outcome."   
  
"...."  
  
"Others accept that you are a detective, and have also come to rely on you too. DO you think it's meaningless for people to rely on you?"   
  
"No, that's wrong. It makes me... so happy to be helpful."   
  
"Then I see no reason for you to compare yourself to me. Every detective is shaped by their motives, methodologies and case histories. That's why I believe I should always seek out the truth. By adhering to your methodology, you've earned accomplishments as a detective, haven't you?"  
  
"That's true... I'll never forget that, Kirigiri. I apologize for having such a negative attitude earlier. Thank you for encouraging me."   
  
He always followed her around like a loyal puppy. He listened to almost everything she said without question, but still she could not shake the feeling no matter what that he was putting her on a pedestal. That admiration of his was the same as the admiration for everyone around her had for her purity.   
  
She said the right thing exactly when he needed to hear it.   
She was always right.  
Being right had become such a heavy thing.

That girl she had wanted so desperately to see her as a person, as a sister, had only seen her as a detective too. That was right. “I don’t have a father, or a mother, or even a grandfather. I was deluding myself from the truth… how unprofessional of me. All I have is being a detective, but… that's not cool.”  
  
“You’ve got that right.” Enoshima Junko snickered from behind.  
  
Suddenly, Kirigiri moved forward propelled by her emotions. She wrapped her hands around the collar of Junko’s shirt and pulled that collar, pulling Junko close to her face and forcing to look at her. “You have all of those people. You had a family that I didn’t. You had a sister who understood you. You had a childhood friend who would do anything for you. How dare you call yourself empty, you’re an insult to empty books like me.”  
  
“What’s wrong? Are you mad Kirigiri-san?”  
  
“I absolutely refuse to entertain the notion that some dumb blonde girl that talks like a thirteen year old on the internet was capable of ending the world all on her own. I hate you Enoshima Junko.”  
  
“Awe but I looooooove you, my beloved classmate Kirigiri-san.” Junko said, playfully, with genuine affection in her voice.  
  
Kirigiri dropped her coldly right there. “That’s enough of this. I’m not going to let you get your claws in Makoto, or Mukuro anymore. Even a murder suspect like Matsuda-senpai is better than you.”  
  
“So you’re not going to sit around in this imaginary world anymore?”  
  
“No, I’m your nemesis aren’t I? The next time I see you again, I’m going to stop you from mistreating any more of those people in the real world. Mukuro doesn’t deserve a sister like you.” Kirigiiri said. She pulled out a pair of gloves from her pocket, and pulled them over her hands. As she did, Junko could see the faintest trace of scars appearing on her hand, before she disappeared from this world.  
  
“A natural born hero and a natural born villain, different from a manmade hero like Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, and a man made villain like Kumagawa Misogi. Isn’t it interesting?” Fukuro said, clapping his hands together in the background.  
  
“Who are you anyway? Rando?”  
  
“Awe can’t you enjoy this turn of events? You are unable to enjoy yourself from the bottom of your heart. It cannot be fulfilled. More than anyone, you do not want to be acknowledged as Enoshima Junko. Because being Enoshima Junko is an empty existence.”  
  
“...Shut up, being Enoshima Junko-chan is awesome. Hash tag blessed.”  
  
“So instead, you try to find your satisfaction in other people. More than others would. Enjoying them recklessly to the point fo sadism.”  
  
“Have you come to counsel me?” Enoshima Junko chided in amusement. After that, Fukuro replied with a simple and pleasant ‘that’s right, before he added.  
  
“You know I noticed a pattern in all of those people you attempted to influence. You were trying to make them more like yourself weren’t you? First Mukuro you tried to make into a despair sister, Matsuda you tried to make into your world, then the Ultimate Despairs but by that point you had lost interest. Perhaps what you really want is not self satisfaction. Isn’t it the same kind of person who can applaud the despair of others, the same way, from the same perspective as you?”  
  
Then he stopped what he was saying, he smiled while giving a sigh.  
  
“Well there’s no one like that. There’s no such person as Enoshima Junko. No other human being lives such an empty existence.”  
  
He opened the book in front of her. The one where she had scrawled Kumagawa’s name over and over again. “But still, you can’t help what you desire right? You’re the kind of girl that’s absolutely true to her desires.”  
  
😈  **Flashback. People wear masks to watch fireworks festivals, but on that day he wanted to see my true face. 😈**

He tried to just walk away hoping that would be enough to make up for forcing her to play along with him. As soon as he took a single step though, claws dug themselves into his arm, and Junko pulled him back. He looked at her, eyes completely blank, not understanding as usual.  
  
“To tell you the truth, I wanted to come here with you. I wish I could enjoy these things normally with you… but I… um… I… I’m a selfish and empty girl. That’s all I am, so, can you stay with me a little more? You are.. Slightly more interesting than fireworks.”  
  
He looked at the red fingernails that were digging into the fabric so hard he felt them in his skin. Kumagawa immediately grabbed both of he hands, wrapping his own around them. Even if his hands were useless, even if hers were sharp and could cut him, they felt warm when he held onto them so close to himself. 『Everything you say, you contradict yourself a moment later., Enoshima I’m always happy inside when I’m by your side but… how much truth do your words hold… just where is the real you? I want to see her!』  
  
Junko’s vulnerability from a moment ago, disappeared as fast as all her other moods did. She noticed how close their faces were. She moved so that they were even closer, only stopping when their toes were touching. “You’re way too close. You really do have no idea how to act around other people.”  
  
『I’m sorry.』He said, weak and soft.  
  
“It’s not your fault,” She repeated his own line back at him. “So, don’t move, okay?” On her own, Enoshima Junko moved to close the last remaining distance between the two of them. Her lips touched together as if preparing for something. They were close enough he could see the shade of lipstick she was wearing, the same color as blood., as well as every detail of her face. He liked the sight of it, but he wondered why she was getting so close.

 

When Enoshima Junko snapped back to reality, she was being tilted backwards, dipped by the older man like she was in a dance. “That’s the moment you began to fall for him wasn't it? Until that moment you had no interest in drawing close to him, he was just a thorn in your side, but then he became a thorn in your heart. Then it changed.”  
  
“What changed?”  
  
“Fate. The heart of a lonely girl. Perhaps you suddenly became his destined bride. Who knows, but the stagnant world began to change. Do you want to know? Do you want to see it for yourself?”  
  
“Who are you? You’re not just some rando, are you?”  
  
“I am. I am. I died before this story even began. This has nothing to do with me.”  
  
Those words that Ryoko always repeated. How did he know them.  The library around them began to dissolve into pixels as he tipped her forward. He too, began to lean forward towards her.  
  
“Do you want to hear a tragic story? A man set up a thousand domino pieces and died of a heart attack before he could tip one. The dominos remained completely in place.”  
  
“Absolutely despair inducing.”  
  
“That’s why, I hope you’ll watch for me. Watch what will happen in the real world from here on out. I hope it will be a future that you do not expect.”  
  
As he said that he finished leaning to close the distance between them, but at last moment Enoshima Junko stopped him, placing a red nail on his lips and inhibiting his progress.  
  
“No.”  
  
He simply smiled like it was his reflex response to everything and let go of her, letting her fall because the floor had already dissolved away into pixels.

“Goodnight, sleeping princess. When you wake up in the real world, say hello to that foster daughter of mine. She’s the sentimental type so she might even remember a ghost like me.”

Enoshima Junko fell.  
An empty book fell off the shelves.  
Even if it fell open on its spine and its pages were blown away by the wind, absolutely nothing would be lost. That was what it meant to be empty after all.  
  
Her cellphone fell out of her pocket and fell with her. When it landed on the ground it began to buzz. She immediately woke up, after having fallen asleep on the floor of the library. Before she could even regain her bearings, Izuru’s dull voice was speaking in her ear.

“What happened to you Enoshima?”  
  
“Dunno, I can’t really remember. It was like a dream within a dream.”

“We don’t have time for your vague thematic nonsense.There was no outside interference, it must have been a random phenomenon.”

“A ghost in the machine?”  
  
“Something like that. You know Ensohima there’s something I wanted to ask you. What if Kumagawa-senpai is simply ignoring you, what if he doesn’t want to wake up from this dream.”  
  
“That won’t happen. I’ll see you again Misogi. You and I are connected by M.”  
  
“M…? Marriage? Murder?”  
  
“No. That which ties the three of us together, all of us fakes, and makes us a real family. We’re connected by Mukuro.”

 

😈

 

In the real world, Izuru had woken up, and then as quickly as he could stripped off the dive headset and gear that enabled them to dive into the depths of the program as their real selves and not simply artificial intelligences.  
  
After all, creating a second Enoshima Junko as a computer program had started this mess, he did not want to try it again, and Enoshima Junko had become absolutely obsessed with this recovery project. She had dug her red talons deep into it, and absolutely refused to relax them.  
  
He rushed down the hallways of the deserted basement they had made their headquarters to hide from the rest of hope’s peak. Far above on the surface normal classes were probably resuming. The snow was melting and the world continued to spin ignorant of them.  
  
He ran down the hallway so fast, that he nearly ran into Mukuro who was carrying a box. She stumbled backwards and let the box fly out of her hand, only for Naegi Makoto to come and catch it.  
  
“Lucky catch!” He said with a pleasant smile.  
  
“My apologies…” Izuru said as he ran down the hallway.  
  
“Wow, he’s much more polite lately. I can’t tell if that’s the Hajime or the Kamukura in him.” Mukuro said with a head tilt, before looking back to Makoto. “Hold that more carefully Makoto, it’s important! Actually, just give it to me your arms are too weak.”  
  
As she snatched it from him, Makoto gave a whine. “Yes, yes, ma’am. Do you have any other orders?”  
  
Izuru finally made it to Kirigiri’s isolation room. As usual Saihara Shuichi member of the 79th class whose semester had already begun, was skipping school in order to sit by Kirigiri’s bedside and read her the novels she loved so much.  
  
“Saihara, did you see anything suspicious?”  
  
Shuichi suddenly turned around nervously. “What? Did something go wrong? Is it my fault? Should I not be here…?”  
  
“Ah… no, it’s fine.” Izuru wondered what he had said to set the other boy off, it seemed impossible when he usually spoke in such a neutral tone. “We got some strange readings with Kirigiri’s recovery, we thought there might be outside interference. I already checked the program however and there were no modifications, and no sign of a break in either.”  
  
“I… I’m sorry I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Shuichi pulled his cap over his head, obscuring his face. “I’m sure… if Kirigiri were here and I was the one who was trapped she would dive right in to save me, like a big sister that always protects me but without her around I’m so useless.”  
  
Hinata recognized the boy’s own spiraling sense of self esteem, it was familiar and yet different. He wanted to hold a hand out, but… he hesitated and turned away. “She’ll be waking up soon, I promise. Everybody will be back together and then we can all go back to that school. That’s all that matters.”  
  
That was all that he was focusing on. He shut out the entire rest of the world to focus on this. As he walked back through the hallway, he stopped to see that Ikusaba Mukuro and Naegi Makoto had stopped in Kumagawa’s isolation room.  
  
He peeered through the doorway with a single red eye. Mukuro and Makoto were both holding party poppers and at once they pulled them and confetti exploded into the air.  
  
“Happy birthday!”

  
“You’re uh.. Twenty now, or is it twenty seven? Mukuro how old is he I don’t want to be rude.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter how old he is. He’s still my younger brother.” Mukuro said, as she opened the box she had been carrying and guarding so closely. There was a cake with words written out on it in frosting. _Kumagawa Misogi. We’re glad you were born._ _  
  
_

Makoto took a spoonful of cake early, impatient and hungry like a normal teenage boy. Mukuro however, moved to Kumagawa’s comatose body, a helmet completely covering his face, except for his hair which had grown long and shaggy. She reached for his hand and squeezed it. She had been doing that every day, like a loyal puppy, walking to his hospital room again and again squeezing his hand and waiting for him to wake up.  
  
_Just like Hachiko._ _  
_ _I hope it doesn’t end like the story._ _  
_ _Jeez don’t be so depressing me._ _  
_ _I’m sorry about that me some observations are hard to control._

 

😈

 

『I’m in despair! I didn’t get any screen time this time around at all! What despair!』  
  
“What are you whining about this time senpai?” Ryokai said, lifting her head up to look at the middle school classroom they shared together.

『Even though I’m everybody’s favorite character, I barely got any focus.』  
  
“I don’t think you’ll ever be anybody’s favorite character, but at least you’re a lot of people’s least favorite character.”

『You’re really an optimistic one, Ryokai-chan. Not like Junko at all.』Kumagawa laid back and curled his body up once more. He let his eyes fall closed. 『I feel like sleeping again, Ryokai-chan.』  
  
“Why should I help you?”

『I’ll stop making so many annoying noises if I’m asleep.』Unable to sleep, Kumagawa turned over again and brought his hand out from underneath his head. He stared at his empty palm for a second, his eyes dulling in confusion. 『Hmm… Feels warm.』  
  
If only there was someone to hold his hand until he fell asleep. Except, as a child nobody had ever bothered to do that for him once, no matter how many times he cried himself to sleep, or was kept up by starvation or nightmares, so he was entirely unfamiliar with the sensation.

『These hands of mine look so empty.』  
  
“...”

『What were they for again?』  
  
“...”

『I’ve been down here so long I’ve forgotten.』  
  
“...”

『What if I forget how to be human next?』 _  
_ _  
_ “...”

『Haha just kidding. I never knew how to begin with.』


	7. A Human Work

You really thought you could be happy.  
You forgot that everything in this world has a price to pay.  
Good luck can only exist if there’s bad luck.  
Hope can only exist if there’s despair.  
Happiness only exists because there is misery.  
  
You used to be able to understand this. You used to see the lines that everybody else was able to live their lives blind to. You used to wonder why everybody else could not understand something as simple that something needs to be sacrificed in order to advance, in order to become happy one must endure misery first. Hope must defeat despair in order to triump. No matter how many times you tried to explain it to them you could never understand why they looked at you with such confused faces, they looked at you like you were cruel, for saying something so obvious, so simple, so fundamentally true about the world.  
  
They called you a liar for stating the truth that you had observed over and over again in life. That hurt didn’t it? So, why are you acting just like them now? Why are you acting like you’ve forgotten?  
  
That child whose hair had faded so far away from red it only had the slightest touches of pink slowly rolled his head to the side. He could not remember how he had fallen to this place. All he remembered was a sharp noise that came out of nowhere and a crack. He looked to the side and saw there was a white dog next to him. However, for a moment he did not even reocgnize it as a dog it’s insides had been torn apart so terribly, and dragged out onto the concrete by the wreckage of the truck.

Komaeda reached forward and tried to reach out for the dog still. He wondered why the dog had been hit instead of him. If it had been him at least he would not have to stare at such an ugly scene, he would not have to go on living in a world without the dog. He had no friends at school or home, the only companion who ever seemed happy to see him when he walked home from primary school was the dog who came happily barking at the door. He thought he had so many clever thoughts and little observations about the world, there were many things he saw on a daily basis that he thought was wonderful but he had nobody to share these ideas with than the dog. He wanted ot learn to talk to others, but all he had was that dog to talk to. It didn’t respond like a human would, it didn’t communicate like a human would, so he had long spiraling conversations with himself. Still, simply to have one being in this world that wanted him around was enough to make him smile. But now he was all alone, there was nobody to listen to him, nobody to greet him at the door as he came home. His fingers still tried to reach towards the dogs twisted and gnarled corpse, his weakened hand trembling as he suppressed his nausea. An ugly, ugly sight, why did he hate such ugly sights? Because they looked painful.  
  
“He got hit by a rival companies moving truck. Because of that we were able to sue them for a large settlement. It’s actually lucky we gained so much and all we lost was that dog.”  
  
_Oh I get it._ _  
_ _  
_ He turned his head around and no longer was he lying on the ground next to the dog. Instead he was in a hospital bed, listening to hushed voices discussing his situation. His hair was bundled back by the bandages that were tied around his head, he had one large gazue pad on his cheek. He almost wished his face had been smashed in, then they might have been able to do reconstructive surgery, to give him a face that looked ore human.  
  
“Huh, well looks like it.”

 _Because my dog died, my parents are now even more wealthy. It was a good thing._ _  
_ _  
_ “Again and again. The fortune is like a twisted rope.”

_I’m happy. I’m really happy. I did a good thing for once instead of causing them trouble. They won’t get mad at me, for making the come to the hospital again, for making them pay those bills, for having another one of my accident._

Fortune is like a twisted rope. Even though he tried to appreciate the good fortune his presence had brought, he could not help but be fearful that one day the rope which arbitrarily twisted back and forth would twist around his own neck.  
  
When his parents offered to buy him another dog he told them no. He was a child that could go without. Without what? His other’s good looking face. His father’s confident and charismatic personality. His parent’s eyes on him. The time that everybody else in the primary school could waste playing, doing silly things like building sand castles. He did not need any of those things. He already knew just by existing he was driving his parents into trouble with his ‘accidents’, with his constant trips to the hospital, he did not want to make it worse. He barely talked in class, at head he lived with his home down.  
  
And yet still one day while he was trying to eat the expensive soup the family chef had prepared for him, his mother grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed it insto the bowl. “You’re not cute at all! Why don’t you look like me? You’re only a primary schooler and your hair’s gone all white, and your skin is so clammy and colorless you look like a starving child. I can hear the whispers you know, people think we’re abusing you. Even though we pay all your medical bills, even though we get you everything you ask for, why don’t you get any better? Come on, eat up properly, I can’t stand to hear anybody else whispering about how I’m a terrible mother because of how you’ve turned out.”  
  
“...” Komaeda tried to sip the soup but it was difficult with his face forcefully pushed into it. She raised his head once more when he did nothing at all, and then seeing that as defiance pushed his head harder into the bowl enough to break the porcelain in one large crack.

“I was so happy. I thought I was so lucky, to marry a rich man that I loved, to raise a child with the man I loved in a huge and happy house, but because of all that good luck I experienced, I was cursed with a child like this. You’re the one who messed everything up. You’re abusing your parents, our good fortune, our good will, you took all of that and cursed this household instead.”

“...”  
  
“But, as much as you are a curse you’re a good luck charm too. I guess there’s nothing to be done about you.”

“...”  
  
“If you wanted to get better you would, your parents care so much about you, they give you everything to help you get better. Why are you looking at me with those eyes? Do you hate your mother for believing in you? For thinking you can be better?  Do you just wanna be trash your whole life?”  
  
“...”  
  
Komaeda turned his head to the side again. He was gazing from the side once more, but this time he was on a tropical island. It was a family vacation, but Komaeda sat on the porch watching his father and mother. The two of them looked so much happier when he was not standing in between them. If he could just let go and be quieter, they probably would be able to achieve happiness.  
  
He just did not need to think about the image of a father on one side, and a mother on the other, each of them holding one of his hands and letting them swing between them. As he watched his father and mother play like newlyweds, laughing happily as they stood knee deep in the water and splashing each other he did not need to think about him standing in between the middle of them as a part of that laughter.

 _There’s nothing to be done about you._ _  
_ _I can’t do anything._ _  
_ _I’m trash._

Someone who just sits back and watches, because they do not even try. Because they’re afraid to try. They could be better if they wanted to, so they must not want to. Just as Komaeda was trying to let go of the idea of being the child of his parents, he could just be a guest in their household, or a good charm to them if his presence was ruining their happiness, he looked to the side and saw blood splash in his face. The forms of his parents which had been happy a moment ago were now lying in front of him gnarled and twisted.  
  
He did not even cry as he saw their faces caved in. He did not shed a single tear, he simply kept staring forward at them. When he was found by rescue workers, they found it odd that a single child was among the wreckage, standing in one place, staring.  
  
_I can’t run away from the cycle of good luck and bad luck._ _  
_ _Perhaps somebody better than me would take this curse and turn it into a talent. Their luck would help them become a hero._ _  
_ _But I’m someone who doesn’t try to do better._ _  
_ _I can’t run away from this world._ _  
_ _I can’t do anything but watch._

He could live without the love of his parents. He could live without his parents. The money was left in his name as the only heir. His only regret was that his parents did not have one more child, then they could have at least experienced raising a child that they loved, and having a child who loved them in return. However, if he had a brother or sister they would have died in that accident too. Perhaps he would have even wanted it to happen because he resented them for being loved and favored in his place.  
  
That was the kind of terrible child he was. He resented others. He looked down on them. He was taken care of by a staff employed at his house but they were always impersonal and formal. He went to school only a week after his accident and it was the same as always. He could only stand back fro a distance and watch the crowds walk away from them.  
  
He reached out for a moment, realizing how empty that house would seem now that he had no parents, now that he had no dog, now that there was nobody who wanted him around. He reached out with careful fingers as if trying to grasp something transluscent and not entirely there like light.

 _Because I’m trash._ _  
_ _  
_ The image of his mother and father’s mangled face flashed through his eyes.

He withdrew his fingers, curling them up and placing them against his chest.  
He turned his head around and was watching through a window instead. Boys were outside playing soccer. They were loud enough that he could hear them faintly even from inside. He was always glancing at things from the side like this, from a comfortable distance.

 _It’s fun watching others._ _  
_  
A soccer ball flew wild and hit a girl in the face. The girl cried and her friend yelled at the two boys. However, a moment later the four of them were getting along. Their friendship was strengthened, because of the fight they had, because of the tears they shed. They were strong enough to endure such things unlike him.

_Everybody else goes through their cycles of good luck and bad luck too. They endure bad things and overcome them so good things can happen. I don’t even try to overcome those things, I don’t try to be better, I just watch and wait._

“I always see this child alone.”  
“Because he claims he doesn’t understand others.”  
“Don’t you know? He’s like a faerie boy, he doesn’t look like his mother and father and bad accidents always happen around him like magic. I wonder if he was replaced in the cradle.”  
“So basically you’re saying he’s inhuman? Isn’t that mean?”  
“If he thought of himself as the same as everybody else, he wouldn’t isolate himself.”  
  
The only place his feeling of constant aloneness numbed was when he was sitting in the red seats of a movie theatre. Usually, everyone was too involved with their own stories and he who was not a part of any of them could only view from the outside. However, in the audience of a movie theatre, everyone was the outsider watching somebody else’s story unfold on the screen. Even when he sat alone in the rows of seats, chomping on expensive snacks he enjoyed it.  
  
_It seems in this world. Everybody wants the same thing._ _  
_ _Everybody is reaching out for the same hope._ _  
_ _Hope is everything that’s important and precious._ _  
_ _Everybody wishes to be happy, hopes to be happy but it’s also fundamentally true that not everyone can achieve happiness._ _  
_ _The reason with obvious. For good luck to happen, you have to pay with bad luck._ _  
_ _The deeper the despair, the more splendid hope shines._ _  
_ _  
_ He watched in amazement as he the couple he was observing onscreen embraced each other in such a romantic ending. The reason that that their embrace was so beautiful was because they had suffered so much despair, in order to reach tis beautiful ending. They experienced heart break, before their love was finally returned.  
  
_As I thought there’s a price to pay._ _  
_ _If I’m the one that has to pay it I have no regrets._ _  
_ _Once I was kidnapped and faced the despair of being murdered alone in that basement._ _  
_ _My only regret was, my survival did not inspire hope in anybody._ _  
_ _I didn’t overcome that trial. I didn’t even try. I just sat and waited like always._ _  
_ _Until he got tired of me and just gave me back. My victory didn’t give anybody hope._

 _I was always just getting lucky._ _  
_ _That’s all it was._ _  
_ _But it wasn’t too bad because even the useless me was able to watch others do what I cannot._

The film being projected onscreen changed. Now the setting was spiral high school, a rich private school for elites. The ideal place to observe the best of the best was Hope’s Peak, but there was no way he was getting into that place. The main characters were the school basketball team, they were working hard to reach nationals this year.  
  
In the bleaches there was Nagito. He clapped his hands together far too enthusiastically. “Wow! Amazing! All of your hard work will pay off for sure, in a brilliant victory that will inspire the whole school.”  
  
One boy caught the basketball and stopped to stare back at the only boy sitting in the bleachers. Technically it was an open practice so anybody could come and watch, but he was the only one that showed up every single day. “What does he want…?” the faceless boy muttered.  
  
“Gross…” Another boy joined in.

“Why is he watching us? So annoying. Those look like dead fish eyes.” The faceless boy said back.  
  
Komada watched one of the boy’s take off his shirt and wipe off his forehead with it before tossing it aside. A girl who was late to watching the practice just walked in at that moment, and giggled shyly, holding her hand over her mouth.  
  
Suddenly, Komaeda was viewing a scene straight out of one of the romantic films he watched.

 _People in love are so very interesting.  
_  
After that, the boy who had said he had dead fish eyes came to him one day after practice. The girl who had suddenly been late to watching practice now came every day just like Nagito did. The boy took Nagito aside, since he was always watching others.

_I’m not sure why but the people who usually turn that nose up at me, sometimes ask me for advice. Another boy on the basketball team asked me to finish a paper for him. That one asked me what I think about his form._

He did not consider himself smart, his grades were good but he had taken too many sick days to qualify for any kind of honor. THe people who were really brilliant when it came to school would be able to be smart even if half of their study time was taken away from them due to their dwindling health, they would not need to study as much as he did. However, he had an outsider’s perspective and he was always watching others and because of this he grasped their underlying problems right away. He did not particularly like basketball but he was able to explain to the boy how he was shooting the ball wrong. He offered to help tutor the boy so his grades would not get in the way of his real talent basketball, and on that day the boy who said his eyes looked like a dead fish’s, asked him if the girl who was watching him practice had a crush on him.

 _I don’t mind helping them at all._ _  
_ _They’re really generous allowing me to be even a small part of their shine._ _  
_ _Besides, young people enjoy talking about love._ _  
_ _Sometimes people ask me of all people advice about their love lives._ _  
_ _That way I can watch love stories unfold one after another._ _  
_ _  
_ “Komaeda-kun…”  
  
That faceless boy who had once said he had fish eyes several weeks later appeared in front of him, and put an arm between him in the locker pinning him there.

“Umm… while I kept going to you for advice on that girl who watched me practice every day, I realized I… the one I kept returning to, the one I really wanted to see watching me was you, I fell in love with you.”

 _What the heck?_ _  
_ _An actor falling in love with a member of the audience?_ _  
_ _What a letdown._ _  
_ _That’s not what I want._ _  
_ _I want to sit in the audience and watch the story taking place on stage._ _  
_ _I must protect my front row seat._ _  
_ _  
_ “You’re nowhere near the star of the team. In fact you’re lucky you haven’t gotten benched for how poorly you’ve been doing lately. Why would I be watching some untalented hack who only got into this school because of his parent’s money like you?”  
  
“Komaeda-kun…? I just… I was trying so hard lately, I wanted you to see me. So I got overzealous and screwed up.”  
  
“I don’t see anything in you at all.” Komaeda said with a pleasant smile. He slid away from the boy’s hand that tried to surround him, and when that boy desprately grabbed onto the jacket he was wearing over his uniform, he ripped his arm away.  
  
The next week after that he kept watching basketball practices but the boy was no longer present. Apparently in the middle of a game he had thrown out his knee in such a terrible way that it would probably never recover again. It was just an unfortanate accident, somebody spilled energy drink on the court and he slipped on it. Not even in the middle of a game. Apparently, since he could not recover he was going to lose out on his sport’s scholarship and his chance to shine in this school. Komaeda gripped his head, watching all of the noise of the court gave him too much of a headache. They had been getting worse and worse lately.  
  
He turned his head away from watching the basketball team practice and saw he was in another room entirely. He stared at the wall and saw x rays of his head hanging there. There was a growing mass where his lymph nodes were supposed to be. Malignant, like his entire existence. He did not need to dwell on this memory for too long.  
  
He turned his head away again and he was sitting back in the theatre. A pale hand reached forward, it looked like the hand a shinigami would use to pluck out the fire from a  candle. The hand stole some pop corn from the buket he was holding.  
  
“Isn’t it cruel that you threw away your one chance at love and immediately after this happened, and it made you realize how important love was. It made you realize you were going to die without love.”  
  
I said.  
  
I noisily chewed the popcorn as the scene playing in front of us changed.  
  
“It wasn’t cruel, not at all. It was just indifferent. The bad luck happens, and then the good. The lantern continues to spin in front of your eyes whether you want it too or not.”  
  
If you had anybody to complain about you should complain to yourself. It’s not that others did not love you, you did not even try to be anything worthy of their love. You did not try even once to get close to others, you just suddenly got deseprate when you realized there was a time limit.  
  
Kirigiri Jin folded his hands in front of him. Komaeda had stopped wearing his school uniform, and stopped attending spiral. He would not have left the house, and nobody really went after him. _I guess it can’t be helped._ He heard the whispers back and forth. However, a letter had come in the mail.  
  
He walked all the way there to tell them no in person.  
  
“I want you to enter Hope’s Peak Academy.”  
  
That man said as Koameda sat across from him. His still, deathlike face, pale from the treatments he had been half heartedly giving himself suddenly became alive and flushed with red. His face fell forward, trembling with emotion. “Sorry for being rude, but this must be a mistake.”

_The good luck I experience will become bad luck. I can’t deceive them. I can’t even be said to possess a worthless talent like luck._

“Only one student gets chosen every year right? I don’t want someone like me to take away their chance.”  
  
_If I go to this school. If I let myself experience that happiness something terrible will._

Kirigiri Jin, the man who lived amongst talent somehow looked at Komaeda like they were the same in that moment. Komaeda realized something incredible. _That man is looking me in the eye._

“I pity you. Ordinary people who don’t possess talent always look in envy at those who do. It’s cruel asking you to come here but… we will research your luck in great detail. We can quantify it in great detail and seek to understand it.”

 _Understand…?_ _  
_ _Ah this man._ Kirigiri Jin. He held the name of the great clan of detectives but he was not a detective in any right. He was a man who should have been born to talent, but was born without, and now he spent most of his life chasing the spectre of talent, the untalented man who thought he could nurture the talent of children at this school. “I’m sorry… until now nobody’s every understood me. It’s impossible isn’t it…?”  
  
“It’s not impossible.”  
  
“I’m unneeded. I’m trash.”  
  
“Listen. You’re not trash. We need you at this school. You’re the only student that’s proven demonstrably that luck exists. If you come here and allow us to study you, then your luck can become a part of a great symbol of hope this academy wishes to nurture.”  
  
“A symbol of hope…?”  
  
“The objective of this school which studies talent, is to create one individual with a hope that shines brighter than anyone else. You could become a part of him, Komaeda. Talent can cover up what is rotten about ourselves, the bad luck you experience can’t possibly destroy a place like this, it can’t desoty ultimate hope, that’s the purpose of Hope’s Peak, we want to cover up the rot and the inferior in this world. So… don’t be afraid. You are an essential part of him too.”  
  
Kirigiri Jin held out his hand.  
  
When his parents had died. When his dog had died. When he had been told in that cold hospital room, by a faceless doctor with slicked back hair and an emotionless voice, accident after accident and he never cried. Enduring all of that despir could not bring tears to his eyes.  
  
However, being told there was hope he gripped his mouth and felt tears running down his face before he even realized it. He had no idea how he felt at the tie. Because those hands of his were hiding a smile on his face. He smiled and cried at the same time, feeling everything at once.  
  
Then slowly he let go of his face, he stopped trying to conceal it, he reached for Kirigiri Jin’s hand. However, he was unable to grasp it. He could tell there was a brilliant light shining in that hand he just couldn’t reach it.  
  
“How many times are you going to watch this movie over and over again? You’re talking about looking to the future, looking for hope, but that’s a lie you’re firmly fixed on this dull sequence.”

I grabbed the side of his face and readjusted his vision so he could not look away.  
  
“Because you’re always averting your eyes, you’re obfuscating, you don’t grasp the point. What kind of observer are you? It’s all you’ve ever done and you’re still bad at that.”  
  
He did not even struggle against me. His skin was so clammy it felt sickly to touch.  
  
“You were happy when Jin said they were going to take a part of you weren’t you? Because you knew if some part of you entered into the final product they would be defective. What you wanted… it wasn’t to witness ultimate hope, or even to experience love like a normal person does. What you wanted was the same kind of person who can applaud the hope of others, the same way, from the same distance as you?”  
  
Onscreen, I watched the happy face of a spiky brown haired boy who was staring up at Hope’s Peak in utter admiration. Suddenly, his face was erased away from the screen leaving nothing more than his silhouette, he looked like a shadow puppet.  
  
“Well, there’s no one like that.”  
  
Nagito Komaeda came onscreen again. He was sitting on the edge of a shore, the waves rolled back and forth. THat island where everything began. That island where everything ended.  
  
_Nobody remembers why they were brought to this island._ _  
_ _They don’t remember that this was a trap._ _  
_ _Nobody but me… why do I remember?_ _  
_ _  
_ Everytime I came across trouble it was just fine if I was just an observer.  
  
He remembered in spiral highschool watching one boy bully the other. Rather than feeling pity for the boy, or even the need to stand up for the boy getting beaten all he thought was.

_I wonder why this happened. It’s probably because he has no hope._

He thought of Zenkichi who promised to do everything he could to redeem him. Who even split up with his beloved Medaka to stand up for him. He thought of Medaka who trusted him immediately when he approached them with a way to rescue both Kumagawa and Junko’s egos. He thought of Tsumiki Mikan who had been attending to Kumagawa’s unconscious body every day. They were just starting to get along as real classmates, because Kumagawa had appeared suddenly and stopped the destruction of hope’s peak.

 _Let’s see… Hope’s Peak was saved and I met Medaka and Zenkichi that’s definitely good luck._ _  
_ _So this had to happen._ _  
_ _You can’t just erase the consequences of the killing game happening._ _  
_ _Because that means erasing the hope that would spring forth form it too._ _  
_ _So my good luck came and then…._

After walking around with Hinata all day, he had made sure to check that nobody on this island but him remembered why they were here, that they had agreed to entire this simulation. He crouched down low on his knees and crossed his hands in front of his face as he gathered those thoughts. He looked like he was praying, begging some desperate god.  
  
After all in the old days, people would slaughter lambs like him as sacrifices to try to bribe the gods for good fortune.  
  
_Luck should bring hope without exception._ _  
_ _Medkaa and Zenkichi will overcome this, we won’t be killed._ _  
_ _Ah but…_ _  
_ _Didn’t I just say this is the bad luck that needs to happen?_ _  
_ _Wait…”_ _  
_ His eyes narrowed and began searching around fantically, beads of sweat fell again and again from his face.

 _How many times did my bad luck take effect?_ _  
_ _Lately it seems like it’s been nothing but bad luck… I can’t… Am I losing track?_ _  
_ _Junko and Kumagawa committing suicide is good luck. The world is better off without them._ _  
_ _No, losing Kumagawa is bad luck._ _  
_ _No it’s good luck because they didn’t die they were somehow miraculously still alive when they washed up._ _  
_ _I don’t… I don’t remember anymore._ _  
_ _Hey, hey, is this good luck or bad luck…?_

His hands folded in front of his chest as he felt a deep holloweness inside of it. His face was red, and he had no idea if he was doing it to himself or he was having another attack of his sickness. Either way he slumped forward, trying to look away from the situation he was in. He had walked into the cage willingly, but now he was beginning to grasp the bars around him. The bars were they the borders of this island, or were they the bars he had set for himself? Those black and white values, good luck, bad luck.  
  
_The rules of the game is that nobody can make it off this island without dying._ _  
_ _Somebody will have to die no matter what._ _  
_ _Why…_ _  
_ _Why is this happening?_ _  
_ _Isn’t it strange?_ _  
_ _Wasn’t my lifespan shortened in exchange for the hope fo meeting everyone?_ _  
_  
He courched down lower and lower, bringing his hands over his ears and attempting to shut everything else out.  
  
_How long have I…_ _  
_ _How long have I been counting sacrifices?_ _  
_ _Isn’t that enough, already?_ _  
_ _Unless._ _  
_ _Luck needs despair._ _  
_ _Hope needs bad luck._ _  
_ _Luck needing despair means, hope’s death._ _  
_ _That’s why there’s ore despair then there is hope?_ _  
_ _If you find the person with hope…_ _  
_ _If you like someone who’s important to you and give them value._ _  
_ _Then the bad luck is inevitable. Luck will bring nothing but despair. All that you declared as hope is destined to be destroyed. Everything called hope will eventually turn to despair one day when the coin flips again._ _  
_ _It’s… It’s my fault isn't it…?_

Suddenly he broke away from the small shadow he was attempting to hide himself in and looked up at the sky above him. Even on this island, there were one thousand dazzling points of light. Such a beautiful sky was shining down on this island and at this moment where he saw nothing but darkness it was still illuminating him.  
  
He looked up stunned into the sky, his eyes trembling. There was light. There was definitely light in this world. It was just too distant, too far away, because he was a distant person he could not reach it.

 _That’s it._ _  
_ _Wherever I go I can’t escape it._

I whispered into his ear. “See, stop looking at the past. You play it over and over again in your head, a non-ending refrain, but this is the only moment that matters.”

Nagito Komaeda silently stared up at the sky transfixed by the beauty of it all. Then suddenly he ran forward into the water itself, thrashing about, wishing to drown. He kicked up splash after splash, and threw his body around wildly. He could not remember ever moving so much or making so much noise in his life.  
  
“Why, why, why, why, why!!!!! Why am I always the reason? This is a joke! Can’t I love anyone? Did I do something wrong? Why only ever me!? Why!?”  
  
He fell back to his knees hoping the water would rise a little bit higher. Hoping it would swallow him up and never make him have to face the reality that he was the traitor that lured them there. It was alright if they found out later and decided to regret ever meeting him, if they forgot about him after he was dragged to sea, he just did not want to face it in this moment.  
  
“Only hope… I have nothing but hope. Don’t take hope away from me! Why… why am I always the one who has to be responsible for hope’s destruction?” He had decided to betray the all so that they could overcome this situation, but as always he left a foot in a door, as always he could not be in the center of things, it was too heavy, too tiresome. “I have enough. I don’t need anymore. Why is this hapepning…?”  
  
_It’s because you were born lucky._ _  
_ _You are at your limit._ _  
_ _You were tired of watching, so you did something on purpose you caused the bad luck on purpose._ _  
_ _Now everything is because of you._ _  
_ _Isn’t that good?_

He stared at his reflection in the water. Now that he had stopped kicking it about the water settled and he saw another Komaeda looking back at him. He wondered what that Komaeda’s world looked like, what the Komaeda who stared up at him thought. He felt sorry for putting on such a poor show.

 _You’ll be responsible when bright hope appears at the end of this._ _  
_ _You can’t say it’s just luck anymore. It was your beautiful betrayal that brought it about._ _  
_ _If absolute despair destroys everything._ _  
_ _Then you just need absolute bright hope that destroys everything as well._ _  
_ _Everything._ _  
_ _That’s despair._ _  
_ _Will be killed._ _  
_

He saw Kumagawa staring up at him from the other side of the water. That was the other boy watching him from the side of the pond staring up at him. He thought for a moment and realized if despair would be killed then that person would be killed as well. The person he had constructed this game to save.  
  
Komaeda picked up a stone around his feet and threw it into the water, smashing the image in front of him.  
A wide smile spread across his face. “Ahaahahaahahahahahahahaahahahaha.”

The thought of destroying Kumagawa’s one chance at happiness.  
He laughed, and laughed, and laughed.  
  
“Serves you right! Ahahahahahahahaha! I’m lucky after all! I was so childishbefore for doubting myself! Because there will be a victory for sure! Everything that’s been taken from me will finally amount to something! This is amazing! You all spoiled brats that were born with talent are finally going to be useful! If this had not happened you would have just continued enjoying your normal school lives not caring about the world at all! You had to be forced to care! How does it feel! Now you feel what I feel! Hahahahaha! Serves you right! Serves you right! Serves you right!”

 _This is it._ _  
_ _I’ve dirtied my hands._ _  
_ _I’ll become a sacrifice to make up for what I did betraying everybody._ _  
_ _It’s not a crime then._ _  
_ _From that hope will be able to be born._ _  
_ _Finally, my luck has meaning._ _  
_ _Meaning…?_ _  
_ _What meaning does it have again?_

“See, all that matters is that one moment. This is the choice you’ve made. This is the person you became. You can’t listen to the past’s refrain forever, you have to look at who you are.”  
  
However, in that moment he looked away from me.  
He’s still looking away.  
He threw me away in order to try to achieve happiness.  
There are two forms of consciousness. Two selves.  
The perceiving self and the narrative self.  
He threw me away his narrator. The one who always worried about good and bad luck.  
Because of that he became senseless, all he can do is react, all he can do is perceive without thought.  
He threw all of that away to try to achieve happiness.  
But no matter what he will never find happiness that way.  
Because the narrator of this story is the person who hates him the most.  
  
“Look at me.”  
  
I asked, but he did not.  
  
“Please, look at me.”  
I begged. But he had already walked stood up. I watched him as he walked out of the theatre. The red curtain closed behind the two of us.  
  
“I’m lonely.”

However, he did not hear me because he had already forgotten me.

 

😈

 

Komaeda Nagito’s eyes shot awake. He saw lights glaring down at him from above that looked like stage lights, but they were nothing more than the lights of the library blurred by the tears of his eyes.

 _My eyes are… watering?_ _  
_ _Why…?_ _  
_ _Did I have a sad dream…?_

For some reason he had a strong feeling that whatever he had dreamt was not even worth shedding a single tear over. _  
_ _  
_ He had already forgotten about what he was dreaming about by the time his eyes peeled open. However, in his dreariness in the morning he immediately noticed that there was somebody in his face blocking his view. His whole world was shaking. No, he was just being shaken. He looked to see and saw Fuyuhiko’s hands on his shoulder, shaking him back and forth with worry.  
  
“Kirigiri suddenly passed out and they had to rush her to the hospital, I was so worried, so worried that you too…” Fuyuhiko mumbled, his eyes were closed hard and Komaeda could see he was trying to hold back tears by shutting them so forcefully.  
  
_You shouldn’t waste your worries on someone like me._ Komaeda thought, but for some reason he did not say it. He did not push Fuyuhiko around like he usually did. Instead he reached up and clung to the edge of Fuyuhiko’s sleeve.  
  
“Please… can I stay over at your house for the night?”  
  
“Dude I’ve invited you over like a thousand times and every time you make an excuse, and I know it’s not because you’re afraid of the Yakuza. The one time I managed to get you to stay over it was because I hauled your unconscious ass home.”  
  
“I know, I’m sorry I just… If I take my eyes off of you I feel like you might disappear.” Komaeda murmured, perhaps he still thought he was dreaming. Oh, the irony of that statement. I can barely keep narrating with a straight face.  
  
Komaeda was weak from his fainting spell. He had been so frantic in his search for Kirigiri he overworked his body and passed out, that was the official explanation he was given. At that moment Fuyuhiko said nothing more, nor did he comment on Komaeda’s weakness. He merely grabbed Komaeda’s arm and hauled him up. It was easy, like lifting one large doll onto his back. Komaeda seemed to have forgotten how to move his own limbs at this point.

After Komaeda had been pulled snugly onto his back and his arms wrapped around his neck, after he was sure he was not going to let go Fuyuhiko finally spoke up again. “You should talk. You’re the one who always seems like he’s going to disappear.”  
  
Disappearing suddenly, it was more harmful for those who were left behind than the ones who died. Worlds were small and fragile things made up of a few people for most people after all, if they disappeared it was like a sudden entire chunk of your world went missing.  
  
Komaeda had been wavering back and forth, but after all this time he thought if he could prevent it he would never want to see Fuyuhiko in pain like that. Even if he was a ghost floating around, not interacting with things, letting everything pass through him easily he still would not want to see Fuyuhiko cry. If that were playing on the screen he would walk out of the movie.  
  
Time passed again that Komaeda simply drifted through passively, and suddenly he found Fuyuhiko was trying to pull his vest over his face.  
  
“Hmmm…? What’s happening?”  
  
“It’s caught on your hair dude. Have you ever seen a brush in your life?”  
  
“Just once, but then my hair ate it so I avoided all brushes since then in fear that I’ll just destroy them.”  
  
“You know you act all polite but you’ve got an even smarter mouth then me.” Fuyuhiko said as he finally wrestled Komaeda’s sweater vest free from above his head.  
  
Komaeda stumbled back and then realized where they were in the Kuzuryuu compound. They were right outside the bath. Fuyuhiko had decided to take a bath with him to get his temperature stable, apparently he was suffering from terrible chills when he fainted.  
  
Reality was playing at too fast of a clip for him. It was overwhelming him, exhausting him. Usually he would say no to bathing in front of someone he did not want to expose his ugly and misshapen body, but at the moment all he could think of was how the bath water would relax his joints. For a boy who was basically skin and bones, a walking skeleton he was a poorly designed skeleton at that. He was sure there was no cartilage anywhere on his body and that was why he ached so much.  
  
Komaeda did the rest himself, unbuttoning his shirt slowly. He even took the time to fold it because he hated messes still, and did not want to make anything in Fuyuhiko’s life more of a mess than it already was.

Komaeda was the first to lower himself into the bath. He was not sure what he had expected, because the water brought him no relief at all. _There’s probably nothing in this world that can._ He thought before correcting himself. _It’s just a bath calm down a bit._

Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko settled in the waters next to him and looked over his shoulder for a moment. “Jeez, some guys have all the luck.”  
  
“Umm… it’s just the water. It distorts the size of things.”  
  
“Are you calling me small then?”  
  
“No, your attitude makes your presence larger than life.” Komaeda said as he held out his hands in surrender between him and Fuyuhiko. He wondered why Fuyuhiko had invited someone like him to bathe in the first place, he could have just taken turns bathing alone.  
  
“You look like you’ve got something on your mind.” Fuyuhiko said, as if reading his mind. “Like your head’s all fucked up, moreso than usual I mean.”  
  
“More than usual…” Komaeda repeated in a quiet voice. He liked how straightforward Fuyuhiko was, and how plain spoken because it meant Komaeda often did not have to wonder what the boy was thinking like he did with others. On the other hand the boy did not hold anything back at all. “It’s… a mess, even if I explained it I don’t think you’d understand, and things would just get more messy.”  
  
“So what? You think my life’s note a mess. I’m basically a teenager trying to run the yakuza alone with his sister. I’m under constant threat of being killed.” Fuyuhiko said as he set the katana he was holding to the side of the water.  
  
“Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Did you really need to bring a katana into the bath?”  
  
“Where the sword goes I go.”  
  
“Still, it’s something I should talk over with senpai…” Kumagawa said shrinking further away. Even though they were both naked right now and there was no hiding from one another he still did not want to be seen.  
  
“Well he’s not here so try me.”

He had to keep these thoughts to himself. He had to keep to himself. He could not ask anything from anybody, because if he did not repress himself somebody would get hurt. Somethin would happen that he could not take back.  
  
All he needed to do was wish a small amount, and receive a small amount of happiness in return. That was all he wanted, and yet that seemed to be asking for too much. “I’m really scared. I think… what’s happening is my fault. I invited it somehow.”  
  
Fuyuhiko looked at Komaeda. “Why the hell would it be your fault?”  
  
“Because I got close to them. I was afraid if I got close to others, they would get caught up in this bad luck that always haunts me. It was so much better when I was just sufferin alone.”  
  
Fuyuhiko observed the way Komaeda trembled. Even in the warm bath, he seemed completely devoid of warmth. He wondered if it was Koameda, or if it was the world that was so cold and Komaeda was just the one who noticed it. Perhaps this world was frozen, perhaps this was a world of ice, but others could delude themselves into thinking it was warm if they huddle close enough. All except Komaeda who had always been alone.  
  
He reached his hand forward towards the boy. Their hands were overlayed for just a moment, and then Komaeda quickly pulled his away. “You’re very scared of initial contact aren’t you?”  
  
“Well we shouldn’t hold hands, we’re not even married yet, Kuzuryuu-kun.”  
  
“Hey, hey, don’t make fun of me! I’m not that much of a fucking prude!”  
  
Komaeda looked at his own thin and sickly pale looking hand. As he opened and closed it, he tried to give form and words to the thoughts that were swirling around inside his head, and causing his eyes to spin slightly too, like clouded skies before a storm. He was always thinking about it, it was always so obvious and apparent to him and yet when it came to expressing it. “You led men in the Yakuza in the past, I’m sure occasionally because of mistakes you’ve made people have died, yes? You’ve probably even killed people that didn’t deserve it.”  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
“You admitted that pretty easily. I’m saying terrible things about you, you know Kuzuryuu-kun. A murderer is a terrible thing to be, once you snuff out someone’s light their dead. A corpse can accomplish notihng, there’s nothing interesting about a corpse.”  
  
“I’m not gonna lie and pretend to be something I’m not.”  
  
“Do you regret meeting those people? If you hadn’t met them, they wouldn’t be dead.” Komaeda said. He was not trying to be harsh either, just state what was in his head as straightforwardly as possible.

  
“I don’t regret getting close to them, no. Even if it was my own fucking weakness that killed them. Guess that makes me a selfish bastard then.”  
  
Komaeda sunk further into the water, his hair slicked with the steam from the bath falling over his eyes. “What if… you had an important person, somebody you could not lose, and you forgot about them because the idea of getting so close to someone you would constantly be afraid of losing them was too painful for you.”  
  
“That’d be regrettable, because no matter what you’re gonna lose them right? If you lose them and forget them that’s a pretty sad fucking story, pointless to tell, but if you remember them at least there was a purpose.”  
  
“What if… because of meeting me, your life was thrown into misfortune? You lost what you couldn’t afford to lose? I don’t think a few happy memories would make up for that.”  
  
“Dumbass. How many times do I gotta say.” Fuyuhiko glared at him. In that moment, in the raw energy of his glare Komaeda felt especially naked. “Even if meeting you was bad luck I don’t give a shit. I’m already in hell who cares if I get dragged a little bit further.”  
  
“Friends drag each other into hell, what an optimistic point of view from a yakuza.”  
  
“Oi, shut up. You know maybe you think you’re strong on your own but pushing everybody away to prove you can stand tall on your own is a child’s way of protecting theselves.”  
  
“Kuzuryuu-kun. How do you know that?”  
  
“How do I… What…?”  
  
As Komaeda looked at him, Fuyuhiko looked back at the sword. He was always holding onto that thing, but it was just an inanimate object. One could not really hold a sword. One could not love a sword. This was not durarara after all.  
  
Before he could think too much about it, he saw the light reflect off of Komaeda’s white hair and was puzzled for a moment. For some reason he felt like he had stared at the back of a head covered in white hair over and over again. Always cowering behind it like a crying child. Komaeda got closer. “The truth is I had somebody like that once. Somebody who did not regret meeting me, who was happy just to have me around, who never asked anything for me, and I… I… I forgot about them.”

He saw tears welling in Komaeda’s eyes. Fuyuhiko did not say anything. He did not even bother to lecture Komaeda for being unmanly. He did not know who Komaeda was crying over, but he felt glad that boy who always smiled like he was on the brink of tears finally let some of them go. Komaeda who had been afraid to even touch his hand a moment ago, threw his arms around Fuyuhiko and burned his head in the crook of his neck. Fuyuhiko only  tried to flatten Komaeda’s hair with a few awkward pats to the head saying nothing.  
  
“Komaeda it’s okay because I think I… I think I forgot about something vitally important too. Damn, what kind of man am I? I’m the lowest of the low. I don’t even deserve to be called Yakuza scum anymore.”  
  
There was a person who was vitally important to him.  
A person who was like his other half.  
A person who had been mistreated and used as a tool, and yet never regretted meeting him.  
Never regretted the bloody life she led up until this point as long as she walked by his side.  
_Those days were like pure light._ _  
_ _So why… why did I…_ _  
_ _  
_ Why was he holding a sword? Swords could only be cold, they could only kill, only a human had any warmth at all, only a human could protect.  
  
Fuyuhiko held Komaeda until he was finished. Koameda shed so many tears he was sure that the bath was overflowing at this point just from how much salt water Koameda had added. That boy was an ocean’s depth worth of issues, but just this once Fuyuhiko thought it was nice to be relied upon.

😈  
  


When Komaeda had finally dressed in a robe and walked out to the porch he saw Natsumi waiting for him with an annoyed expression on her face. He had poured some tea and tried to offer her a cup, only for her to smack it out of his hands.  
  
“Umm… this is your house but that’s no good, you broke it.” Komaeda said as he knelt down to look at the shattered pieces on the ground. He tried to touch one only to cut his finger. As he sucked on the wound he remembered why most people avoided broken things.  
  
“What do you care? You’re just some rando that imprinted on my brother and follows him around all day.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re wrong but… I don’t think Kuzuryuu-kun likes how overprotective you are of him.”  
  
Komaeda thought a moment after he said it that it probably would have been better not to say anything as Natsumi immediately turned her angry gaze at him. “Shut up already! You don’t know a thing! Nothing can ever take my brother away!”  
  
“Is this…. Is this about the terrorists?”  
  
“It’s not that. My brother’s the super high school gangster. He’s the one who deserves it not me. I gotta live up to the title to protect him. Really, I would have been happy just being the super high school level big sister but if I was that…”  
  
“If you didn’t have talent…?”  
  
“Yeah, if I didn’t have this talent I’d be useless to him. He wouldn’t need me around. You know how the yakuza is, only the strong survive the weak get left behind. Not on my watch. Screw that.”  
  
Komaeda thought of Fuyuhiko constantly saying that he wanted a weak person, no a weak and ephemeral existence like himself around. “He probably doesn’t care if you’re strong or weak. He probably just wants you for you.”  
  
“There’s no way! Shut up, what do you know? My brother deserves the best and that includes all of the people around him! Do you know how much it pisses me off that you get to cling onto him all the time without earning it?”  
  
“I… I can imagine. I have a fairly good sense of imagination if nothing else.” Komaeda said neutrally. Even if he did not know precisely how he made other people angry, he had observed it again and again, that his existence just seemed to agitate them. He had so many missing parts that he reminded others of the missing parts in themselves.

“I want him to be proud of me. Not looking down from above.”  
  
Komaeda had the feeling he had heard those words before. That Natsumi had confided in a main character like this, who could only passively watch her. However, he had not been the person she was talking to at the time.  
  
There was no way he could ever get that close. He had to have been watching from afar, watching and wondering why two reserve course students were making so much noise.  
  
Suddenly Fuyuhiko arrived. “Oi, Komaeda where’s that tea? Natsumi, how many times did I tell you to stop hazing Komaeda?”  
  
Komaeda laid two cups down in front of the two of them.  
  
“It’s too bad we don’t have any booze to split.” Fuyuhiko said. “We could have become brothers.”  
  
“You already have a sister. I would just be dead weight.”  
  
“Hey, what’s the sky look like right now?” Fuyuhiko asked.  
  
Komaeda shrugged and then looked up above. He saw it again, a million pin pricks of light, a million hopes that he would never be able tor each. Dazzling, dazzling, far off into the distance. “Nothing, it’s just a regular sky…”  
  
“You’re usually more poetic than that.”  
  
“Well maybe I wasn’t feeling it today. You know Kuzuryuu-kun…” He looked back finally and lifted his cup. “We both live like we’re always walking on the borderline of death, we always have to be aware of it more than most people are… I always talk like I’m normal, I always keep saying there’s nothing extraordinary about me but… It’s only around you that I’ve ever really felt it. “  
  
A murderer and a god of death.  
Peacefully drinking tea together.  
Then suddenly, Komaeda felt something that tasted foul like poison pass his lips, and went numb. His body fell over like the strings had been severed, his face crashed into the plate.  
  
“Sorry man, but you’re right I felt normal around you too that’s why… I was wrong, I shouldn’t keep dragging you into this bloody revenge business.”  
  
“...Fu.. yuu…”  
  
“Were you trying to say my name? That’s the first time you’ve called me by my frist name. Unless you were trying to say fuck you, in that case fuck you too…”

That was all he said before he left. Komaeda tried to reach after him. He wondered why he had to live this over and over again, feeling his body be powerless and being able to do nothing but grasp at the silhouette of a person leaving him.  
  
It was like grasping at the curtains as they fell on the stage, entirely pointless, the red velvet would only fall from your hands and it would do nothing to stop the show from ending.

Fuyuhiko picked up his sword once more, ready to face curtain call.

 

😈

 

Hinata Izuru had been sitting on the top of the old middle school building. Half of it was being torn down for reconstruction. Kumagawa was sleeping in one of the few abandoned rooms.

He had been pondering the irregularity in the proramming and what to do next. By nature he was reactive, not proactive like Junko. However, he wanted to prevent any kind of event like that from happening in the future.  
  
These last three being extracted out of the program were the ost delicate. He would not forgive himself if he failed Peko with rescuing Fuyuhiko, after everything Pekoyama had done to take care of him. She had thrown away her own chance at happiness and tried again and again to help him and Komaeda worked things out.  
  
In every timeline that she survived at least, which was the vast majority of the rounds. However another part of him was simply enjoying the breeze blowing at his hair. It was nice to have short hair again even in the virtual world. From this high up he could watch the slight differences in wind currents. He liked high places. Though he doubted this would last for long.  
  
Suddenly from below he heard a shout. “Hey, dickhead!”

There it was. It seemed peace of mind was just unsuited for him but that was fine because peace was boring anyway. His red eyes narrowed and the red squares around him flickered back and  forth. “Right on schedule.”  
  
“You got some balls laying a hand on my friends! You’re gonna regret not killing me when you had the chance.”  
  
Izuru stood up in one smooth motion, and then without hesitation jumped from the highest point of construction landing on the ground. “You’re finally fighting alone? Isn’t it too lately to pretend to be manly, Kuzuryuu.”  
  
“Who are you…?”  
  
“Wouldn’t you rather somebody else be holding a sword in front of you than trying to hold that sword on your own?”  
  
“I asked who the fuck you are? Do you not have ears! I guess it makes sense because you’re a dickhead that you wouldn’t have any.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“Because you see instead of your head it’s just a dick.”  
  
“Yeah I got it.” Izuru felt his entrance was totally ruined, and kept his even gaze on Fuyuhiko.       “The world… Destroyer.”  
  
“World destroyer? What are you some kind of edgy emo prick? Loser your head up there in the clouds?”

 _Junko is the one who came up with the title not me. Ugh, why is she slacking off again._ The fact that Junko had stayed this serious until this point was in and of itself a miracle and perhaps the saying went beggars could not be choosers, but Hinata had decided to live with all his choices, therefore he was going to make the choice to be ungrateful and constantly complain.  
  
“Was it truly you who killed everyone?”

“From your perspective that would indeed be the case.”  
  
“Why would you do such a thing?”  
  
“In order to destroy… this world.”  Hinata called out, from across the great empty plain of the construction field.  
  
“Why them…?”  
  
“Because they were your friends. His friends are his world, the who didn’t matter, any of them in any order would be sufficient.”  
  
“You’re just a damned terrorist with a dozen loose screws.” Fuyuhiko’s childish features twisted in anger. He drew out the katana and threw the holster aside, pointing the sharp end at Hinata. Even though there was quite some distance between them, he possessed such a murderous glare he looked like he could cut through that space in a second.  
  
_Well he’s not wrong about the screws loose part but…_ Hinata did not react at all to the threat, even if it was his friend and Peko’s precious person threatening him with violence. He was simply too distant from others at this point. He had decided though even if it was far off, he wanted to follow the faint star of hope in the distance. Sentiment had outstripped his expectations a tiny bit.  
  
“This world doesn’t have Pekoyama Peko in it. Isn’t it worth destroying?”  
  
“...What.”  
  
Suddenly, memories came flooding back. The time they were kidnapped together Pekoyama held his hand the whole time and she even tried to smile, but he was just an ungrateful little brat who had blood splashed on his face and cried.  
  
The time they went to the zoo together and he got into a fight with the king of the monkeys because it tried to throw trash as Peko, and he did not regret at all that he caused a bunch of trouble because he saw Peko for once smiling naturally without thinking of it at all.  
  
If he could be the reason she was smiling like that, he thought he would finally be enough as a man.  
  
The time Natsumi died and Pekoyama tried to offer to take his revenge for him. He told her he would do it on his own, that he did not need her. For one moment he suddenly threw himself on her, resting his head on her chest. He would never forgive him for that moment of weakness, for needing to be comforted by her.  
  
Every day after that he pushed her away further and further. He wanted to become a man worthy of her. He wanted to be someone who stood at her side, not someone who walked ahead of her while she followed in the shadow.  
  
He remembered all the times he had to clutch her hand, while cowering from the loud fights his parents were having.

All he wanted was her, to be by her side, not as a tool, he just needed her.  
  
Then, why was he still here? Unlike HItoyoshi Zenkichi he could not unhinge himself on the spot.  
  
It was not a sword but a girl that was always by his side. He had wanted to live for her, they had always been together since they were children, but he had failed to understand her.  
  
Both her and his sister, because of that…  
  
_Natsumi is dead in the real world._ _  
_ _And I forgot about Peko._ _  
_ _Even if I were to die a thousand times I’d never be forgiven._ _  
_

Fuyuhiko fell on his knees in front of Hinata. Their manly duel between men had been settled without a single blow being exchanged. Even if he wanted to disappear though, the shame of having failed those two women held him in place. Peko might forgive him in an instant but he could never forgive himself.  
  
It was complicated, it had become too complicated between them, even though it was supposed to be sweet and simple, a childhood friend romance. Even though he always kept in his heart, the memories of the times they sat on the porch of their classical style hole and then he managed to coax the always serious Pekoyama into playing with him in the garden and he pushed her over and she started to laugh… even if that memory was there now that they were grown it had become too complicated. The strings were crossed, knotted, the puppet could not move.  
  
“Don’t you think it’s about time you make up your mind about what it is you want, Fuyuhiko? You say you want to be strong on your own, but all you wanted was to be by their side right? Or… are you satisfied with just doing nothing and never moving on from your loss? Well, I guess that’s also an option.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I can figure out the general permutations of events very easily, so I can say without question there were several options you could have taken where your sister and Pekoyama both would have lived. Your story took the most tragic turn possible and it was due to your own incompetence.”  
  
“What are you fucking saying…”  
  
“However, that does not mean happiness was impossible to begin with. There was always a chance for you to have worked things out with your sister, this world… it may be a delusion but it’s not an impossibility. I can understand why you clung to it.”  
  
_This is just…_ _  
_ _This is just another version of the same story._ _  
_ _Does that mean that…_ _  
_ _In that version of the story, you wouldn’t have to die?_

He saw the back of his sister walking away from him. His sister that had only wanted to be the best for his sake.

“I… I…”  
  
If he went back on his words now.  
After he had told Komaeda that he did not regret meeting him even if it led to loss, then Komaeda would really go on living believing there was nothing in life but loss. That he should just avoid others because all he could do was take from them.  
If he could not accept the reality that he had lost, and…  
That there was a chance that he could have become happy.  
That he should not lose sight of that chance.  
  
Fuyuhiko punched the side of his face hard. “I didn’t need you to tell me. I knew it already. Speaking as if you know everything… Guys like you really piss me off. That image of my sister, she really must be a memory, she can’t be a ghost because if Natsumi could see how pathetic I was acting right now…” Fuyuhiko after hitting his face hard again, wiped the stray tears that had fallen from it. “She'd break an ungrateful brat in half until I stopped half assing everything.”

“I just pissed you off… I thought I was speaking from the heart.” Izuru lamented in an emotionless voice.  
  
“Don’t worry, I get along better with idiots that piss me off like you, Komaeda and Zenkichi then I do with guys who don’t offend me.” Fuyuhiko said, smiling pleasantly at Kamukura tears still rolling down the side of his face before he finally gripped his katana again and drove it straight into his stomach.  
  
“Fuyuhiko! That’s dangerous you could just leave of your own free will.”  
  
“Nah. I had to… This is the only way a violent guy like me can think to pay back the debts I owe…Damn guess I can't call Zenkichi an idiot anymore.” Fuyuhiko held out a hand to Izuru. “P..,hone please. I have an idea to lure him out, because that idiot always does the opposite of what everybody else tells him to do.” Blood trickled from the corner of his lips.  
  
Suddenly Komaeda was awoken by the cell phone Fuyuhiko had left behind ringing. Even though his whole body was numb, he reached forward to grab it desperate to hear the voice of his friend again.  
  
“Good, you’re safe…” Fuyuhiko’s voice came out on the other end of the line.  
  
“Kuzuryuu-kun.”  
  
“Please… listen carefully… There’s not much time. The man who murdered all of our friends is after you.”  
  
“What…?”  
  
“He has short hair and red eyes.”  
  
“Where are you?”  
  
“Listen, you made the correct call. You wouldn’t stand a chance against him. You were right to run.”  
  
“Hey, where are you?”  
  
“Nagito, don’t blame yourself. Even if this story is a tragedy instead of a happy one like you wanted, I don’t want to rewrite it, because it’s the story where I met you. An utterly... human story... to tell with a god of death and a murderer.”  
  
“Don’t blame myself…? For what…? What’s that supposed to me…?”  
  
“I failed.”

He heard the phone get dropped on the other side, and then picked up again. Somebody was berathing, he was quiet for awhile and then he spoke in a voice lacking any inflection. “Am I speaking to Koameda Nagito…?”  
  
“Who are you?”  
  
“The world… destroyer.”  
  
HIs eyes narrowed as suddenly, images flashed before his mind. He saw a boy with brown hair, pixelating out as if he was glitching out of reality, behind him a beach with water splashing back and forth. One day that boy with no remarkable features had washed up on the beach and he had held his hand.  
  
Then the next moment the boy was rushing towards him and threw himself over the flames. He saw a spear descending from above, about to fall on him as planned but the boy threw himself over and the spear pierced through his gut instead. As he watched the flames flicker back and forth, mouth taped shut, he wantded to scream and throw himself into the fire for what he had done, for the holy being he had desecrated with his unclean hands.  
  
Then there was the time all alone that swords were driven into his back. His body had not gotten up and walked away after that. He felt terrible wounds in his back, a phantom pain. Perhaps he was still pinned down there and his ghost had simply left his body and begun to dream.  
  
“Has your world crumbled yet? Have you remembered me yet?”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“It would seem not. How unkind of you.”  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“There’s nobody left around you but I suppose your world just consisted of yourself to begin with. Then, that’s fine. I shall proceed until it has. Even if that means destroying you. One by one. Piece by piece. I will tear it down. I will offer no mercy. I will spare no one.”  
  
“I’ve heard enough!” Komaeda felt anger for the first time in a long time. Genuine anger. Before he threw away the phone. The next moment he heard the sounds of a message being sent.  
  
He opened it against his better instinct, and saw Fuyuhiko’s bloodied body sent to him over a cellphone picture.  
  
This feeling, this feeling, this feeling what was it? It welled up inside of him right now, it was entirely too familiar but he had felt he forgot the name. What is this feeling, this awful feeling that ate away at him and seemed to grow infinitely by devouring his insides like a cance.  
  
_Ah._ _  
_ _So this is what despair feels like._ _  
_ _  
_ He said as if being reminded of an old friend.  
  
In the back of his head a voice was laughing.  
My voice was laughing.  
A clown was laughing.  
  
“I told you it was impossible to forget me.”

😈

 

Outside of Kumagawa’s door, a hand hovered over the handle. Enoshima Junko hesitated before simply barging in again. Her face reddened as she recalled the memory of their time at the fireworks.  
  
Ever since then, huh…  
Perhaps she was the oblivious one.  
Even now she had no idea what Kumagawa was feeling, merely her own desire to stomp over all his feelings to get what she wanted.  
  
Enoshima Junko wondered, she truly wondered when she had started crying over broken and lost toys. This was a whole new kind of despair, but as exciting as it was to discover it also numbed her down. It made her hesitate.  
  
Taking advantage of the hesitation, Ajimu Najimi appeared out of nowhere and wrapped a hand around hers pulling it away from the door. “Yahooo, Junkoooo-chan.”  
  
“How are you even in here?”  
  
“I can be wherever I want to be. Do you want me to be in your shadow again?” Suddenly, Enoshima Junko’s shadow doubled in size and took on the silhouette of Ajimu Naimi’s long hair. “Do you want to go inside that mind of yours? It’s rather empty so there’s plenty of room for-”  
  
“Haven’t you gotten in my way enough lately?”

Every time Junko wanted to be alone with Kumagawa, suddenly Aimu appeared. She wrapped herself around Kumagawa in the hospital bed he was laying in, her white robes fluttering and surrounding him like he was in a cocoon.

“I’m just trying to spend time nurturing my underclassmen. All I want is for you to be happy, Junko-chan. That’s my latest impossibility.”  
  
“If you want me to be happy then please die a gruesome death right where I can see you.”  
  
“Alright, then I’ll be sure to die offscreen where you won’t see it at all.” AJimu said as she crept closer to the other girl. “Hey, hey Junko do you regret meeting Kumagawa-kun? It’s because of him that you’ve changed so much, you got declawed by me after all.”  
  
“Of course I regret it. It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me, not a single thing has gone right in my life since that day.” Enoshima Junko said, her eyes hopelessly lovestruck, a childish smile of glee spreading across her face. “It’s absolutely wonderful. As long as Misogi exists, everything around him will be thrown into chaos and things will remain interesting. The rest of the world, and even myself were just boring but he’s… the only interesting thing.”  
  
“Oh that obsessive streak of yours is so moe, Junko-chan.”

“You sound like an old hag trying to be hip.”  
  
“But you know, Kumagawa-kun and I were like that in the past but… that didn’t satisfy either of us at all. I could live in a world that only consists of you, it sounds like a nice romantic ideal but it doesn’t align in reality, because we only had each other we started to resent each other.”  
  
“Yeah well I’m not the worst like you, so like most things it’ll be better when I do it.”  
  
“Anyway let’s talk about teh animes, Junko-chan.”  
  
“Don’t misspell things on purpose to sound cool! I know you’re like a billion years old but is your brain stuck in the 2000s?”  
  
“Nobody wanted to talk to me about anime, because nobody else was as big of a nerd as you so I had to go teleport here and find you and interrupt your important mission.”  
  
“I’m not… I just read anime academically, it’s an important part of our culture… or er I do it ironically, shut up okay? Shut up!”  
  
“Anyway, you know Haruhi Suzumiya? I’ve always thought about this. Why don’t they just tell Haruhi that Espers, Time Travelers and Aliens exist? Wouldn’t that solve all her problems?”  
  
“Wow you really are stuck in the early two thousands.”  
  
“Quit complaining Junko, in 2005 you would be about five years old so the same age mentally as you are now. Anyway, the reason they didn’t tell Haruhi is because it wouldn’t make a difference. Sure, maybe she’d be enertained for a few days and go on an exciting adventure, but… after awhile she’d grow used to the existence of Espers, Time Travelers and Aliens and shed grow bored of them too. There’s just no helping easily bored girls like that.”  
  
“What are you trying to call me Haruhi? You’re the mary sue with the god complex, leave me out of this.”  
  
“Even if Haruhi learned she was god, I doubt it would make that much of a difference to her. No matter how many times she created and replaced the world, she’d never find one extraordinary enough for her liking. It wasn’t the world she was bored with, or the insignificant people around her, the person she was bored with…”  
  
“Was herself?”  
  
“Ding ding. You’re finally learning Junko-chan. Now then, why do you think Kumagawa-kun can’t see you on the other side of this door?”  
  
“Because… even if we’re together, I’ll just do the same thing again. I’ll hurt him again. As iconic and marketable as I am, I’m basically a one hit wonder.” Enoshima Junko’s chest hollowed out as she leaned back against the door. “He’s just bored of me, is that it?”

Because Kumagawa Misogi had suffered enough pain was becoming boring to him.

  
On the other side of the door Kumagawa Misogi picked up one of the bright shining candies that looked like a marble and held it in front of his eye, looking to Junkai in the corner of the room.

『Candy is so sweet but it dissolves way too quickly, just like happiness. Living for happiness and living for candy are both equally futile.』  
  
“Yes, hello you’ve called 1-800-did-I-ask?”

 『Come on talk to me. Nagito-chan hasn't visited me in awhile. It's lonely...』  
  
"He was probably scared away by the fact that you're a terrible person. That's what my supreme analytical abilities tell me anyway."

『Hey, Ryokai-chan. You’re the one who controlled reality when we wee in the game, so you’re probably the best authority to ask on this. Did Nagito-chan’s luck really exist.』

“Hmmm...Probably not.”

『Oh, that’s going to be disappointing for him to hear. That’s probably better though.』  
  
“Why…?”

『If luck was real, then Nagito-chan would be inhuman. But he’s not. Nagito-chan’s just a normal boy. He was shaped and formed not by something as fickle as luck, but by the people around him. He’s an entirely human work.』

“You’re always so generous in believing others to be human but never yourself.”

『I don’t have time to be a human being, because  I’m too busy being a clown after all.』He flicked the shining candy ball forward and knocked several others offer the table. 』  
  
“I guess you would think that when your whole life is a joke.”

『Still, even if it was a delusion I don’t think it was a bad thing when Nagito-chan believed in his luck. Hope. Despair. Friends. Everybody has some delusion they fill themselves up with, everything but me. When he was able to go forward clinging to that delusion, trying to strive for that ideal he was a lot more beautiful.』Kumagawa reached towards the ceiling. He could see the stage lights off in the distance. He reached, reached for them but he knew it was futile. 『It’s dazzling you know...』

“Huh, what is?”

『The light. Everybody can see it. It’s so dazzling, everybody has a chance to reach it but me. In the past I thought I could even though I was so much lower than everybody else, I kept thinking I could catch up but...』  
  
“But…?”

『That dazzling light it’s still out of reach.』He looked at the image of Junko in his mind. Her smile fixating on it like a star in the sky. Even brighter than a spotlight on stage. 『If I was never going to reach it right from the beginning then why do I have to see it?』

“Probably because god hates you as much as I do.”

『That’s fair enough I guess.』Kumagawa stopped reaching and finally rolled over. 『As long as I'm in here, I can't be hurt and I can't hurt others.  I was always hated I was never welcome in that world to begin with.』

Kumagawa’s eyes froze as he let another piece of candy pass his lips. 『This candy is way too sweet.』 He then looked at the remaining pieces he had sitting on the desk with him, and hit them hard with the broad side of his arm scattering them. They hit the floor and bounced into each other, and rolled in many different directions because of their interactions but Kumagawa had already turned his head away from watching because it was all nonsense. 

On the other side of the door, Ajimu Najimi simply leaned against it smiling like a cat at Junko. “Or perhaps that is what he’s afraid of. Do you know what it’s like, to get your face ripped off Junko-chan?”

Enoshima Junko wished the world to end precisely at that moment.  
However, just once the world did not go exactly the way she wanted it to.  
The world continued to spin.


	8. Even if Your Love is a Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Komaeda's freakout is a reference to Koimonogatari.

“There's an easy solution to your problem. You should just kill her."   
  
Kumagawa sat on the edge of his bed of desks, his shoulders hunched over like he was supporting the sky of this virtual world all on his own. Even though that was a metaphor and an allusion to greek mythology it was not far from the truth. Kumagawa was one of those ugly children that would have been thrown into tartarus by his father after all.  
  
“What you love was the future Junko made you see. She's a flower adorning your journey. If you kill her you can escape from here."  
  
The empty room they sat in, empty because Kumagawa had thrown away everything others brought to that room, the gifts that Anshini’n-san harassed him with, the blankets and bandages that Mikan had brought for hi, and the bento boxs all were gone and the room was devoid of substance except for the white cloths which hung around every piece of furniture making it look like the realm of the dead However, even those started to fall away, thrown about carelessly, billowing, rustling like a fresh breeze had blown through the room. The candy that had been left littered around like jewels, glowed as a piece of light made its way into that room a place where previously no light was able to reach. It refracted again and again, before hitting the single piece of round colored candy that Kumagawa held in his hands and then glared into his eye. Still, Kumagawa did not stop staring down at his hand.

“I'm saying this because I hate you, you shouldn't stay here anymore. I've given up on escaping to the real world or being the real Junko, but if you kill her at least you could be free and stop annoying me.”  
  
Kumagawa Misogi picked up another piece of candy, one black and one white and crushed both in his hands slowly and thoroughly. He curled his fingers all the way into his palm one by one to do it. When he finished he uncurled them and stared at the broken pieces, the shards of black and white mixing together. Then suddenly, the candy was no longer candy. It was fake candy after all in a world of delusion, it could be anything he wanted it to be. He stared at two crushed cherry blossom petals in his hands, and looked around to see the whole room littered not with candy but cherry blossoms that had fallen away. The white sheets had fallen onto the floor, revealing the dust and decay of the room finally. This room was definitely where the cherry blossoms that were blown away after clinging to their trees for so long went to die.

Still staring into his empty hand, Kumagawa finally spoke up. 『Is that all?』

“....”  Junkai slowly reached for the paper bag covering her face, and dug her pointed nails into it, sliding it off of her head. There were bandages wrapped around her face, but she slowly started to unravel those.

『Is that really all you have to say?』Kumagawa moved to stand up, letting the torn up cherry blossoms fall out of his hand. He grabbed the chain that had been connected them instead. As he pulled on it, several more chains fell into the room. It was not a single point, but rather an entire mess of chains, knotted, and overlapping endlessly that had connected them. Yet, Kumagawa was able to break the links apart instantly, letting them snap like string.

Junkai looked at the shattered remnants of chains at her feet, throwing her bandages away. Kumagawa raised his foot and kicked over one of the desks that made up his bed. Then the other, until they were all upturned on the floor. He kept stomping onto there was nothing but wood and twisted metal pieces left on the floor and even then he did not stop for a few extra.

『I’ve had enough of you, get out.』Kumagawa had already turned his back away from her, he dug his hands to his pockets and walked out the door without looking back.  
  
The two of them were both lies. A fake existence, an artificial human being who had been copied off another person, and a person whose entire personality was fake, a lie, rewritten again and again to suit him for the moment. There was no way the two of them could ever get close.  As he left she tore one more white sheet off of a piece of furniture and revealed a mirror. Finally, she could put her make-up back on she could resume her mask. However, she hesitated for a moment seeing something red falling from the corner of on her eyes. “Good bye. Good Morning.”

As Kumagawa walked down the hallway, his shadow extended far behind him. Not one, but many screws were driven into his shadow. At the neck he looked like frankenstein with two bolts driven into him. Not only that but the screws were still moving, still turning in deeper. With every slight turn of the screw, his shadow glitched out, only to return a moment later.

Even though Kumagawa was completely calm, his eyes fixated forward, hands driven into his pocket and walked each step without any hesitation at all, his shadow was shaking and acting separately from him like it was crying and writhing out in pain.  
  
He walked down a hallway with several windows on both sides. The windows were cracked and broken, some of them having most of the glass missing, but there was enough shards of glass pointed and sharp around the edges for light to reflect off of them. As he walked forward, in the reflection of those glass windows his own face distorted into Ajimu Najimi’s. He could see her watching him again and again appearing in the rows of successive broken windows from his periphery vision and did not bother to turn his head.  
  
“Hey, hey, Kumagawa-kun why are you continuing this anyway? Are you trying to atone for locking me away in a box in your heart for three years.”

『...』  
  
“Well it’s enough don’t you think it’s already been seven years, you were punished for twice the amount of time.”

『...』  
  
“Are you trying to suffer for the sake of others again? The reason your palm is so empty is you’ve driven screws into it so many times, now there’s only holes left.”

『...』  
  
“Are you trying to play the hero again?”  
  
『...』  
  
“Did you fall back on playing the villain?”

『...』  
  
“Nobody wants you to lock yourself away in here you know. Well, maybe the vast majority of people would agree that’s a better option for someone like you but the people whose opinions matter to you don’t think that.”

『This is what I want though..』

“Do you feel bad for overusing All Fiction? For erasing the consequences of your actions too many times? Do you feel like you cheated, that you should have died by now?”

『It’s not like I want to die.』  
  
“You’ve given up on living as well.”

『Mm, I guess I did.』

“Are you pretending to be grown up? Is that it? All you did was sit in that room all day and spout pseudo-intellectual wisdom, pretending you were guiding Komaeda-kun. However, being aloof and distant like that, always dreaming and staring at the stars that’s a child’s idea of maturity. In the end you did what you always did, you tried to handle all the pain on your own until last minute and then you threw a tantrum and destroyed everything around you.”

『I suppose you’re right, you know me best after all.』  
  
“You’re pretending like you’ve grown and have moved past pain, have stopped feeling things, but really you’re just repressing yourself the same as ever.”

『Well that might be true but… the reason I always stayed the same before was All Fiction. I erased the consequences of my actions and therefore I couldn’t grow. I stayed unchanging. That’s why you gave me that power isn’t it? You wanted me to stay immortal and young forever, like Endymion under the moon.』  
  
“...”

『It’s rare for you to be silent Ajimu-san, you run your mouth just like Junko. The difference this time is because those 52 rounds weren’t erased, I learned something finally.』Kumagawa finally stopped walking. He turned his head around slowly, to see Ajimu was not in the glass but rather standing right next to him, she reflected at the center of his eyes taking up the entirety of the world from his perspective.  
  
Her eyes were glaring low, a shadow of her usually happy and pleasant looking gaze. “What did you learn?”

『Do you remember the day you appeared to me in that alleyway? I always wondered, why me? Did you want someone that you could save and turn into a hero, but there was already Medaka-chan for that? Did you want to make me into an enemy that would help Medaka-chan’s growth because she was your real favorite all along? The person most like you, the boring girl who didn’t see herself as human? Did you hear about my suffering from the rumors of Kumagawa the demon and come to laugh at me? Did you really want to save me, but you failed in the end because you couldn’t feel anything real towards a human? Did you want someone who would fail to save you because there would be no obstacles to killing yourself in the end?』  
  
“Whatever conclusion you came to is probably stupid,” Ajimu said in a huff next to him.

『It’s definitely stupid, but you know this world is fundamentally stupid. It’s a tale told by an idiot. It’s an absurd joke. So I don’t think my stupid conclusion is all that wrong.』Kumagawa turned his head again. Ajimu was no longer there, and nor was her reflection in the broken and missing glass, instead he was just staring at his own face a crack running through it distorting his face down the center makin it look like half of his mask was slipping off. 『Because you saw me and you thought, this thing is just like me.』

“...?”

『Even closer to you then the perfect imitation Shiranui Hanten who followed you around for two hundred years, because no matter how well he imitates you it’s just a mask he’s wearing, there’s still a human face underneath but not like me. I’m just like you, the only other non-human in existence.』  
  
The hallway that seemed to extend into infinity suddenly stopped before them. Kumagawa was no longer staring into a window, but rather a hole in the wall, the part of the building that was under construction and the open construction field could be seen outside. Ajimu was merely hovering over the empty hole in the floor, her feet dangling in the air, dressed in white she looked like a ghost haunting him.  
  
He had a terrible memory. He was always forgetting the terrible things that were being done to him, but he was always remembering as well. Terribly inconsistent at that. He forgot his pain minutes after it happened to him, that was how he was able to keep living, but that was also why he never learned and never grew past that pain.  
  
So, that day that he had been broken so irretrievably, he did not remember what specifically did it to him. After he escaped from that river, after he escaped from that clinic, he was free and wandered from one place to the next, and wandered from one misery to the next. It could have been anything that finally broke him, as strong as the human psyche is it’s also shallow, it can endure the heaviest things, and it can finally snap under the tiniest of weights.  
  
He forgot things easily, because he lost things easily, and eventually he came to lose something that even he did not think it was possible for him to lose. Oh, now he remembered. He endured long periods of homelessness, but it was impossible for a child to live on the streets that long without dying, so just like he was homeless he stumbled into a few caretakers too. He was always thrown out in the end but that was what he had come to expect from adults.  
  
This one was different. That man in all black walked away from him. “You don’t have any more money.” He said. “So there’s no reason for me to stick around. People won’t stay unless you give them a reason to, it’s ridiculous to expect otherwise. Fundamentally, all people are replaceable, you can’t expect to cling to one person forever. This world is cheap.” He was unneeded, a lost child. There was absolutely no reason at all for others to see him. Nobody would want him around because fundamentally he had nothing to give to them.  
  
He only added more problems. He could only take away some of their stability and support himself with it. The world was complicated enough already, people carried enough burdens living entirely on their own already. Someone like him who could only add further complication, who could only add further burdens was not worth reaching out to. Odds are anybody who reached out a hand to him he would only drag down further with him, he would create another person just as bad as him stomping over all their good will.  
  
So he understood why, when he was living in the alleyways after that nobody looked his way. After he had become lost when that man in black left him, nobody found him again. He was an entirely invisible child. It would be better for the vast majority of society if he would never be found. The machine could go on working without one misshapen gear inside of it. In fact if he was accepted it was more likely he would gum up the works.  
  
He had always been observing people as close as possible, right in the thick of things, that was why even a slow learner like him, a fool, and idiot, knew about the darker side of people. He knew exactly why when they saw him wander in nothing more than a torn apart white uniform, an old scarf, and a dirtied blanket he had been carrying with him wrapped around the whole of his body. Nobody noticed when such a dirty child made a scene dragging that blanket behind him. They only noticed him when he stole food, but that was the kind of attention he did not want to bother with anymore, so he stopped that altogether.  
  
In the rain he sat down in the alleyway he saw the half rotted away corpse of another child. He wondered what would happen to it,why nobody even bothered to take it away. Perhaps they thought it would be washed away and end up in the gutters, taken care of on its own if they just left it there. He thought at least a corpse would attract enough flies to get people to notice, but invisible children must remain invisible even in death.

Well it was fitting he would meet his end here anyway. He was lord of the flies. His very existence sewed chaos and attracted trouble for others, an unnecessary element others would be without.  
  
The moment he let his head sink, wanting to nod away to one final rest. The moment he stopped caring whether he lived or he died, wanting to fall asleep to the lullabies of whispering people in the background.  
  
“Filthy child.”  
“Shapeless Spawn.”  
“Automatic Failure at Humanity.”

“Making children like you happy is my duty.” The nurse HItoyoshi-sensei said to him once.  
  
Then, she also said this. “Why do I have to meet a jerk like you again? People like you will never grow up. What is this reverse character development?”  
  
As if it were so easy for someone like him to grow up. As if he were just choosing not to, like he had been offered it on a golden platter and slapped it away like a spoiled child. That him who was shot in the kneecaps at the starting line, was at fault for not wanting to even bother with completing the race. That he was giving up too easily because he could not do what everybod else did so easily, what came so naturally to them they did not even think about it. As if he did not see the looks of those people in that clinic, looking at him like all the violence that had done to him was his fault, for being a violent and unruly child.  
  
Five years old. He heard that at that clinic. They had already written him off. Then they put on false smiles and pretended like they wanted to work for his happiness.

『Kindness is just a performance. They just want the appearance of being nice.  It’s really shallow after all, people will only reach out as far as it does not hurt them. The moment it does they retract their hands.』Kumagawa whispered to himself, huddled in his blanket. 『That’s why I don’t want kindness, I don’t need others to be kind to me.』

Five years old. They had written him off. He had never been allowed to be a child. They said people like him would never grow up, as if he had been offered every opportunity to do so and simply chose to shrug it off, simply chose to end up like this. Well whatever.  
  
『They were right in the end. I ended up like this. A net loss. If somebody had tried to hold out a hand for me they would have become a loss too. At least… this way I probably won’t ever become trouble for Zenkichi-chan again. He can continue living happily in that normal house, with a normal mother who loves him, having forgotten about me.』Only a really lonely person kept memories from their heart from when they were four years old. Only a person with a dreadfully uneventful story to tell devoid of all meaning fixated on such a small event.

 _It can’t be helped I guess._ He thought wanting to let his eyes drift asleep, however before he could she suddenly appeared before him, as if stepping out of a dream. Dark red hair, red eyes, and she wore all white.  
  
It was obvious she did not belong to this world. She was an illogical element that could not fit within this world just like him, she was being excised by the laws of physics, an invisible ghost, and yet she stood there with a smile.  
  
“What is your name…?”

『I am… Kumagawa..』 The boy who was nearly drowned in the river.

“Really? What a dull name!?”

That was it. That was how he became a found child. From the outsider’s perspective, it looked like mere unexpected coincidence, the whimsy of an easily bored girl trying to find a new pet to enertain her. She even got bored of him eventually and started to spoil Medaka-chan and Zenkichi-chan instead to see what would happen if she pushed such polar opposites together.  
  
However, he had turned it over and over again in his head. HItoyoshi-sensei once asked him, “You calmly trample on other people’s precious things, and you also calmly accept people’s fear towards you. Kumagawa-kun don’t you doubt anything about yourself? Have you ever thought about why you were born into this world?”  
  
He had not even once. He did not need to think about it. People were born for no reason at all, they lived their lives searching for reason and would find none. However, people always had deeply motivated reasons for what they did to other people.  
  
So he tried to understand her, Ajimu Najimi a seemingly completely illogical entity, aberration, abnormal and irrational. He replayed that moment again and again in his head and wondered why he of all people had been found. The moment he became a found child.  
  
Because he simply could not believe it. Human kindness was a lie. People were always taking coldly calculating moves and calculating loss, and risk when they got closer to others, they only reached out in self interest.

However, now that one moment had stopped replaying in his head. He had moved on from it, just as he had moved on from the  middle school room in his heart. He sat down on one of the iron beams, his legs dangling their as he sat on the absolute edge just like always looking down at the high place he could fall from below and break his body further when he splattered. 『All people are fundamentally empty, but people are called humans because they grasp at meanings to live for. Whether it is hope, despair, sentiment, lack of sentiment, bad luck, good luck,  hate… even love. Even if living with those things are just lies, they’re able to ascribe meaning to it but not us.』

“Kumagawa-kun.”

『We can’t find meaning in anything no matter how hard we look. Love or hate doesn’t matter to us. We can accept all of those things calmly… because we weren’t human in the first place. Human emotions can’t reach us. That’s what you wanted isn’t it? A non-human like you to watch from the edges. So, let’s watch the finale together.』  
  
“Kumagawa-kun, Junko-chan, Medaka-chan, Komaeada-kun are they all humans?”

『Of course they are. They’re just normal kids.』  
  
“Then why doesn’t the same apply to you, Kumagawa-kun?”

『The girl I loved once said this. There’s no one who could have endured the same amount of suffering that you claim to have, they wouldn’t have any trace of their ego left. There’s no way I could have survived all that and still remained human. After all immortal boys don’t exist.』

 _Ah I see. This is my fault isn’t it?_ The delusion that had once affected her but in reverse. Kumagawa was aware that the entire world around him was real, but he had given up on his own existence. All because he had come into contact with a non-human named Ajimu Najimi, all because he had sympathized with her, loved her, tried to understand her, and tried even to save her. Also because she loved him in return, and pulled the strings in his life as well.

Kumagawa merely smiled catlike. 『Don’t worry it’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. That’s why people look away from lost children, so they can say it’s not their fault. The moment you choose to commit to something, the moment you become attached you become at fault.』  
  
“Kumagawa-kun…” She said with a softness he was not aware that she was capable of.

『Nevermind that, we’re taking screen time away from my beloved nagito-chan, wasting it on an unnecessary character that simply takes up screen time like myself.. Let’s watch the finale from the front row seats.』 He looked up at the sky above him, holding out a hand. 『Such dazzling lights, pretty stage lights, it’s dazzling can you see it?』  
  
“No I can’t…” Ajimu answered honestly.

『I hope the spot light falls on Nagito-chan this time. He deserves it.』 So he decided to accept his role observing from the outside looking in. The outside of what? Madness perhaps.

 

😈

 

Nagito Komaeda bent down to observe Fuyuhiko’s corpse for a moment. His eyes were looking somewhere else, and he certainly did not think that even one reflection on him passed in his eyes, nor through his mind as he died. Komaeda lingered in the construction site staring at him, and no words of mourning passed through his lips, nor could he shed a single tear. He thought that was fine though, because he did not want to disgrace Fuyuhiko’s passing with his ugly and unpleasant emotions.

  
Then, he did as he always did and walked over the corpse careful not to step on any part of it, even the blood that had pooled around Fuyuhiko. He continued forward until he entered an empty room covered in darkness and surrounded by the hollow skeleton of a building.  
  
“I did not anticipate you would show up so soon. I expected I would have to delete Kumagawa-senpai first.”  
  
“Killing all my friends is one thing, but implying I care about Kumagawa-senpai. There’s a limit to human cruelty, you know?”  
  
“Do you remember me yet?”  
  
“Neither Kuzuryuu, nor Hitoyoshi-kun were pushovers. You must posses a lot of talent to be able to take them out easily.” Komaeda held his head at a slight tilt, the entire world was like that tilted off its axis, not neat and tidy and symmetrical as it should have been. Sometimes he thought he was the only one who could see that.    
  
“Yes, that is me. Loved by a boring thing such as talent.”  
  
“I despise talent. Were I able, I would erase all talent fro the world entirely, and I’ve never felt that so strongly. So you, have to go…”  
  
“I suppose that’s a good enough recollection, one a boring person like myself-”  
  
“I remember. I do. Hinata-kun. You were my best friend, you were everything to me. But that’s also why you have to go.”  
  
Hinata had been restraining himself until that point. His voice kept emotionless to fulfill the role of the world destroyer, he tried to keep personal sentiment out of this because he was just bringing Komaeda out of this happy dream for his own good. For his own good. The constant thorns that had been driven into him, about how this person could dream happily without him, about how this fantasy world did not include him, about how the moment he arrived that fantasy fell apart he ignored all of them. He was not Enoshima Junko, he was not as petty an existence as her. Yet, the more he distanced himself from his own emotions the further he was rebounded back to them like the snapping of a rubber band. “You really do… simply an amazing specimen you are. A boring person like me remembered by someone like you…” The red squares flared up around him, his image pixelating around the edges, “I’m so flattered, and how do you plan to get rid of me with no talent of your own?”  
  
The two of them circled around each other. That was what they were always doing, two birds who wanted to fly together, but who were afraid of colliding, afraid of hurting their wings and losing that freedom to fly they just flew in wide circles.  
  
“I won’t deny I’m just a regular guy with a bit of an unlucky streak. I don’t belong anywhere near the spotlight.” He threw a chestnut at Hinata, only for him to wildly miss and hit one of the steel beams, it bounced around a few times before landing in his hair. “See? Anything I do turns out badly for me. I could never come out on top.”

He saw the image of Kumagawa’s back appearing before him. He never knew why, that weak looking back could charge forward so recklessly, regardless of the consequences. It did not matter what he did because all of his actions turned out meaningless in the end, that should have been discouraging, but now he understood. It was freeing. Kumagawa lived freely because nothing he did mattered. Did Kumagawa ever truly lose? After all people were born from dust and they returned from dust, therefore there was a net loss of nothing. Kumagawa had nothing to begin with, his existence was a zero, and he gained nothing from his actions. What a free way to live, after he had been tying himself down to such heavy chains all his life. That was how Kumagawa was able to be both, a nobody, and interact with significant people, because his actions always became insignificant.  
  
It was not anything special though, or anything philosophical. It was just spite. ‘It it’s not going to matter anyway then I might as well do what I want’, a childish philosophy, but Komaeda had never allowed himself to be a child either. “Even though I lack any real talent, I can’t see myself losing to you either.” If it did not matter whether he won or loss, because no matter what those people would not come back, all of his friends would be dead, and nobody would mourn the loss of his insignificant existence he might as well try to lose.  
  
He picked a baseball out of the front pocket of his uniform, and threw it forward. It bounced off the steel beams several times, and he held a hand out to catch it.  
  
“What you’re feeling is called hope.” Hinata said without moving.  
  
“Reveling in the pointlessness of life and wanting to destroy in spite of it is definitely despair!” Junko said, from where she was watching behind the bars, but both boys ignored her.  
  
“Hope…? Hope… What a peculiar sounding word. Although, I feel like I’ve heard it before.” He stared at the baseball in his hand. A hand that could grasp nothing, hold onto nothing, everything sunk away like sand through a sieve. When they found his corpse they would not care whether or not he had died fighting, he doubted they would even look up his name. A pale death like hand. The hand of a reaper. A weak grasp, like a cherry blossom clinging to a branch. “All right then, let’s see what hope can achieve.”  He threw the ball again.  
  
Hinata did not move this time either and the ball missed his head. The ball ricocheted around wildly, hitting every beam in its precise weak spot. The bolts that were holding the beams together unscrewed themselves, and fell like rain all around the two boys. Nuts and bolts together flew around him but Komaeda was not hit by a single one, nor did he flinch in anticipation of being hit. “I have such terrible luck. I couldn’t possibly defeat you.” He lifted his chin slightly, the shadows twisted around his face in a slightly hopeful expression. He was smiling, elated, after all spending his whole life in fear of who he would drag with him to a terrible death because of his own terrible luck, or dying alone, caught between two terrible extremes feeling himself being torn apart at the seams by them as he indecisively wavered which ending would be more miserable for him. But now… he was going to die with this person, he was going to reach into him with his skeleton hands, and feel the warmth around his heart, and feel alive just for a moment before he snuffed out the candle and caused a mutual death. It was almost romantic, his face was glowing, almost blushing, a lover’s suicide between the two of them. Komaeda was glad even in death he did not have to let go of his romanticism for life, even after being bombarded by its meaningless again and again. “But maybe I can take you out with me! Imagine how incredibly unlucky you’d have to be to make a whole building collapse by throwing a ball, even if it was already falling apart.”

He picked up the gun that had been given to him at the hospital earlier. A revolver, he spun the barrel and pointed it in a random direction. The bullet ricocheted again and again. “Kuzuryuu-kun, Hitoyoshi-kun, thank you, what a fun and meaningless story…” Then as he closed his eyes the bullet hit him in the middle of the forehead. He fell backwards, the same way a person would as if they had run face first into a wall, dead where he was standing.  
  
The bullet was just enough, it cracked the supports of the building and brought the rest of the middle school tumbling down on top of them. Steel beams fell, even Kumagawa needed to jump to readjust his position on them. Hinata however did not move the entire time, even when he wanted to jump again to stop Komaeda from pointing a gun anywhere near himself. His heart froze in terror when he saw the bullet plunge into his forehead. It was an image he never wanted to see, even in a fake world, even in a lie, even his a delusion. However, he forced his feet to stay on the ground. Standing still, doing nothing, it was what he was best at. Even though the iron beams fell in every direction not a single one got anywhere near him. He was like the eye of the storm.  
  
That was the existence known as Hinata Izuru, calm and rational to a fault, even when it came to the storms known as human beings he could only act as the peaceful center of it. He had difficulty again and again understanding the emotions that swirled inside of them.  
  
“Do you remember yet?”

Komaeda had collapsed and buried himself in a pile of iron bars that had fallen from the heavens. However, there was someone standing over him, he had held his arms out to catch the iron and he carelessly threw it aside. When he stood up fully, he was wearing a green jacket, and his hair was much longer, it was much more shapeless, swirling into formless spirals.  
  
“World destruction com- wait why is he still?”  
  
Theree was not one Komaeda but two of them. The Komaeda that only experienced bad luck was still lying on the ground, a hole in his forehead and a trickle of red traveling down the side of his face his eyes still closed.  
  
“Come on Hinata-kun this is the part where you’re supposed to say ‘Do you remember finally?’ Of course, a needy and presumptive reserve course student like you would assume the person I needed to remember was you. Unlike you though I know my place so I waited until the proper time…”  
  
“You’re talking like-”  
  
“Myself? Well that makes sense I am me after all. Even if it’s a trashy self, it’s the only self I have. What the world needs is hope, right? Immense hope born from equally immense talent. I believe my actions will become the foundation of the world’s hope, and if that really happens… Praise me. Tell others what I’ve accomplished. Erect a bronze statue of me. Respect me. Please call me… The Ultimate Hope. You’d expect that kind of line from me, right?”  
  
“Nagito, this world is reflective of your true desires. Why are you rebounding so hard back to hope? Did Kumagawa-senpai do this, did he tear you apart with bookmaker?”  
  
“Huh? No, I was always like this. The inside contradicts the outside. It’s just a metaphor of course, but in a dream things like metaphors can become real. I was capable of partitioning myself, the performance, the outer ego and the inner one. But it was lonely living like that. I wasn’t lonely for lack of you, but lack of myself… but since this is a dream. Anything is possible. I can reconcile the irreconcilable, I can finally make sense of the paradox of my personality.”  
  
Even with super highschool level analysis it was difficult for Hinata to parse what Komaeda was ranting about. He simply stared quietly, but Komaeda knew that was Izuru’s childish way of refusing to admit what was going on.  
  
“Well, it’s a story like this. Once a boy sold his shadow. He thought he would not miss such a thing and he could buy lots of things with the money. However, after that point everybody avoided him. Technically there was nothing wrong with a boy with no shadow, no misfortune, no curse, it was just he was unlike everybody else around him, they all noticed he was missing something, those missing parts were uncomfortable to look at because he reminded them of their own. So the boy went back and begged and begged to have his shadow returned but it was too late. Oh, except not in this case.”  
  
“What do you mean, you’ll be able to be both at once…?”  
  
“Simply put, I’m going to become everything.”

Komaeda Nagito, in his green jacket, began to look like a physical reaper as everything else about him, from every orifiice, his eyes, his ears, and when his mouth opened again he bled shadows. The last thing not to disappear in shadow was his smile, which glowed a pure white. Then, he simply dissolved away, as the boy without a shadow, the student Komaeda Nagito who had no extraordinary characteristics suddenly grew a long shadow, long enough to eclipse Izuru’s own.  
  
Then suddenly, as if somebody from above had given a tug on strings Komaeda’s chest heaved, and from his ankles he suddenly regained the strength to lift himself up. Komaeda reached forward and dug into his forehead, plucking the bullet that had pierced through it and tossing it aside. He grabbed the green coat that had fallen on the ground and wore it over his uniform. Even as blood trickled down his face he did not seem to mind or notice.  
  
“Do you remember now…?” Kamukura asked once again, observing the unexplained phenomena. The mission had been planned and executed by both him and Junko, he even made Junko sit out this last part so she would not make things more complicated on purpose, the only unexpected event so far was a ghost in the machine so why…

“Yep! I remember everything!” Komaeda said, his smile catlike, his eyes closed. He turned away from Hinata then, and spun his body around starting to skip over the wreckage. In a moment he was clear of the building and walking in the road, a car appeared out of nowhere but Komaeda did not even stop or change his pace, the car swerved around him, not even coming into close contact with him as it spun and hit out on a pole. The pole split in half and fell but it did not hit him, it only blocked the way of Hinata who had run after him.    
  
“Nagito what are you doing? I came all this way for you! Isn’t this what you wanted? You wanted somebody to understand you, to understand you’re worth giving a second chance, you wanted somebody to find you? If you remember then why don’t we go back to that school together.”  
  
“Umm, you were never a part of that school reserve trash.” Komaeda said cuttingly again, before he smiled pleasantly. He held his arms out wide and began to dance around by himself. His hair spiraled around him, like wisps of swirling clouds that were blown around just before a storm.    
  
“Beautiful…” Hinata muttered, breathless. He had the world’s worst timing. It was another useless talent he had.  
  
“Really, everything’s a lie. Really, everything is a lie. Really, everything’s a lie! The whole world, this dream world, my dreams… really, really, really, really, really, really, lies, lies, lies, lies, everything is a lie. You really are a liar!”

“Huuuuh? Aren’t you the liar? The one who made up this lie of a world is none other than you.”  
  
“I guess that’s true. The person who told the lie ‘you could be happy’ is none other than myself. You know someone once told me that I don’t even try to overcome my luck… who was it… Who was it again? I forgot. It’s true that I never tried but, isn’t that basically not my fault at all? I hate myself like this as well. But this is who I am… This is me, I can’t do anything about it. But still… even if I’m like that, it’s who I am. So that’s why…I… I only need myself. The only one who needs to understand me is myself. That’s the lie that you just told, pretending like you understand me.”  
  
“I did understand you. You think after fifty two times around you think I’d still fail to understand you? You think I’m that terrible a person?”  
  
“Yep!” Komaeda said with a smile so bright he was downright sparkling. He picked up the gun and shot it at Izuru again. The gum jammed at last moment.  
  
“You’re the one who still hasn’t learned. I have good luck as well…” Izuru said, muting his own emotion as he slipped faster than Komaeda could see once more. He appeared behind him, his hand brushed around his hip as he went searching for the gun, his other hand laid on top of Komaeda’s as he reached, and suddenly he lost footing. There was oil pooled on the ground from the car accident that had happened around Komaeda, how had he not noticed it until now? He had been too fixated on Komaeda, transfixed on him like a single point of light a single star in the sky.  
  
Komaeda put his fingers over his lips and giggled through them. “Slipping on a small patch of oil. How comedic. How unlucky.” Komaeda simply hit the back of the gun hard making no attempt to fix it, and the barrel itself cleared. A lucky hit. “You know to me it was like I was living in a world full of glass, always holding back myself afraid I was going to break something, to break someone. That’s why I’m lucky, I’m lucky that nothing I do in this world matters, that it’s just a dream of mine, that it’s just a delusion. I can do something I’ve always wanted to do.”  
  
“...What is it?”  
  
“Really, all the talent in the world goes to waste on you. This is why they shouldn’t have tried to raise up a reserve course student to the status of the talented ones, even if you replace all the inside components the frames no good. They should have started with someone of talent. Cme on, dummy. I told you this one directly. If you understand me so well, then remember.” Komaeda said, as he bashed the gun on the side of his head. His eyes which had been red this whole time, suddenly drained their color as the storm spread to the, spiraling black and white. White hope and black despair were trying to mix in his eyes until they became indistinguishable from each other.

“You told me once… that the power of luck is like… unlimited power. You’re using your control of the program to control your luck!”  
  
“Finally, the genius sees it. In a world like this where my luck is just a numerical value, an assigned stat like in a video game, if I control all the numbers then I can finally have what I’ve always wanted. Absolute control.”

“Nagito. What does that matter! What can you possibly want from a world like this? Nothing in this world is real?”  
  
“You still don’t get it huh? Tsk, tsk, would you stop disappointing me. I can’t feel an overwhelming despair I must overcome from disappointment.” Komaeda’s cloak billowed behind him as suddenly he turned around and ran away again. The world had not frozen, even though Komaeda realized it was nothing more than a delusion he was in control of. Was he lucid dreaming?  
  
Hinata rushed after him. He saw Komaeda at the edge of a busy intersection. Easily, the boy skipped into traffic, like he was playing a game of frogger. Around him, the cars all swerved out of the way crashing into each other but he was completely untouched. A semi suddenly turned to swerve and tipped over, rolling down the hill slamming hard and sweeping right at the area Hinata was running to catch up to him.  
  
“You still don’t understand me.”  
  
“I want to! You’re the one whose running away from me rightnow, asshole!”  Hinata said as he slid under the truck, only a small aount of his own luck protecting him as he stood up once more.  
  
“Fine then. It’d be fortunate if I had a knife right now.” Komaeda said as he finished crossing the road and went to a nearby trash can. He picked up the lid and found several knives thrown away. The exact same kind of knives that had been stabbed into his body over and over again before his death.

『Really, for a supposed genius I can’t believe Izuru-chan didn’t see Nagito-chan of all people going manic after realizing the whole world was a lie. Junko at least should have.』 Kumagawa said watching from afar still sitting on one of the few remaining intact iron beams with a pair of opera glasses.  
  
“She probably did, she just kept quiet about it.” Ajimu said, sitting next to him.

『Ah, what a junko-like thing to do. Everything she does is so very like her.』  
  
“Quit it with the goo goo eyes…” Ajimu said, rustling slightly.  
  
Komaeda threw the knives in random directions. Kamukura dodged them calculating all fo their trajectories, but he did not see the happenstance that another car would drive by, a bird would fly by in the air, and it would ricochet off of both at just the right angle to strike him in the back.  
  
“See, this is the power of luck. This is why Enoshima-san wanted to rely on luck to overcome her analysis and bring about her defeat.”  
  
“It’s like that one x men…Domino.” Hinata said as he hunched his back forward.  
  
“You and Kumagawa-senpai read too many comics. Really.” Komaeda said as he walked over to a dumpster. “I hope nobody threw away a harpoon!” He spoke in an almost comical way, and then when he flipped the lid, he grabbed the sides of his face in overreaction. Then he picked up the harpoon and leveled it at Hinata.  
  
“You’ll lose if we go hand to hand. Luck or not.”  
  
“Are you sure about that?” Komaeda said as he readjusted his grip on the harpoon, grabbing the rope that hung off the other end as well. Actually, holding such a heavy object made his weak body wince, luck or no luck, and striking such a cool pose made him wince as well but he just went back to smiling after the jolt of pain faded.  
  
Kamukura rushed forward and then slipped behind Komaeda once more. This time however rather than oil, it was a banana peel that he slipped on and he was unable to get his footing. Komaeda turned around and jammed the spear hard into Hinata’s chest. “If you want to understand me so badly, I’ll show you my memories. My time on that island. The side of myself I hid from everyone.”

The moment he was pierced through, Hinata was no longer in the body of world destroyer. He was standing on the beach again with Komaeda in the middle of the first investigation. As he knelt down and went over their notes, he saw Komaeda like a shifting shadow in the corner of his eyes. He looked up but whatever expression Komaeda had been aking a second ago was gone. “....Komaeda?”  
  
Koaeda stared into his empty hand for a moment, before flexing his fingers and touching the back of his neck shifting gears so easily. “Ah, nothing. I have to think about something for a bit. Is it okay if I have some alone?”  
  
“Is that so… I understand.”  
  
Komaeda drifted away from him, his legs shaking. The moment he got inside the door, he let his weak shoulders collapse, gripping himself furiously. He had already started a cold sweat, and the shakes were starting. He tried to hold himself together, if he shook too violently he would just fall apart.  
  
He stumbled forward looking madly around. If he let Mikan know how sickly his body was acting, she would never leave him alone. It was not like a consistent illness that plagued him, it came and went. An affection of the immune system after all. Even if it was currently in remission it could come back any time. _Why now…?? What set it off? Was the good luck of surviving the first round too much? Wait, no I must have had high blood pressure. I got too uncomforable planning different ways I could die by Zenkichi’s hand and I couldn’t eat nor drink. Oh, I didn’t sleep either. Silly me. I was supposed to die so…Damnit why does Kumagawa-kun have to get in the way messing up things. This shock could it be…? Remorse, oh yeah, I stabbed a classmate so many times. Kumagawa-kun could have died, because of my own petty emotion. So many things could go wrong with my body right now I have no idea which one._

He looked up and saw the refrigerator. He just needed something to help him overcome the symptoms he was facing right now. He only needed to last until the trial. Nobody went to his cabin, so he could fall apart to pieces there if he wanted to. He could even disappear for several days to recover he doubted anyone would go after him. He reached into the refrigerator and picked up the first energy drink he could find, cramming it into his mouth and slurping up the contents as fast as he could. The next one, and the next as well. He was surrounded by piles of cans on the floor from his attempt at self medication, and he let his head rest against the refrigerator door as his mind went somewhere else due to the sudden intake of caffeine.  
  
“Illness? But, Kumagawa fixed your progressive memory loss!” Hinata in the meory spoke up, as he was just being forced to relive a flashback after all.

“Did you forget? Even a reserve course student should pay attention in class, though I guess it doesn’t matter how much or how little you pay attention because you can only succed if you get a magical surgery to make you better. I also have cancer of the lymphatic system. Kumagawa-kun couldn’t undo that, because it would mean undoing my invitation to the academy. I was always sick, I always had symptoms.” Komaeda said, looking up from where in the memory he had crouched over the refrigerator.  
  
“That time!”  
  
The time that he lost his mind in the trial, and revealed his true natural laughing evilly, the reason his body twisted in such wretched motions was because he was trying to hold together despite the pain.  
  
“And that time…” The times that he had been chained to Hinata were especially hard, because he had to hide any pain until after Hinata was sleeping, and insisting that he slept on the floor meant his body was twice as sore. Well, not like he expected any relief.  
  
In the class trials, he did not want to suddenly faint or break into cold sweats because most of the time he was sure he was the only one who figured out the mystery beforehand and could not risk disappointing the others. “Always, I had to endure the pain alone!”  
  
“Why… why didn’t you tell me? Why do you insist on suffering alone like that? It’s not like I wanted you to carry the burden alone, I was always trying to get through to you…Why didn’t you just… how was I supposed to understand till now?”    
  
Komaeda smiled as he lifted his head once more. In his memory, the bell was ringing for the class trial. He walked forward towards the door and left. As he walked past Hinata simply standing there, he walked straight through him. He whispered into the boy’s ear. “I have speical feelings for hope’s peak. Like you.”

Hinata’s eyes suddenly opened again and he was not on the island, and Komaeda was no longer walking next to him but rather on the floor. They were in a basement, with bags and bags of garbage that had not been thrown out yet. A man in a mask was watching the television as Komaeda regained consciousness. _Oh, that’s a murderer. I saw him on tv. I remember now._ _  
_

Images flashed through Hinata’s mind, aa little bit being picked up because he had to walk home alone wearing such an expensive uniform from an elite private school. He had screamed and screamed but nobody came after him. He thought he saw a few people in the distance but they hurried away out of sight. He rolled over and realized that his hands were tied behind his back. He realized there was no moving from this spot.  
  
_My purpose, was I born just so I could get killed? Never to amount to anything._ _  
_ _This room smells awful._ _  
_ _Trash._ _  
_ _Is meant to be thrown away._ _  
_ _Always looking down on others._ _  
_ _Manipulating others using them to my own ends._ _  
_ _Was I trash till now…?_ _  
_ _Even as a child…?_ _  
_

He wondered as he reached for the corpse of his dead dog, was he manipulating even back then? Was there ever a point in time where he had been innocent? His parents accused him of taking advantage of their good will. Was there a time when something had been taken from him where did not deserve it? Was someone like him allowed to be a victim? He stared at his dog wondering what he possibly did wrong back then, what he continued doing wrong, and what had led him down the twists and turns of the rope of misfortune to this moment.

 _Is this really the right thing?_ _  
_ _Am I going to die just because I’m trash?_  
_My wrists hurt._ _  
_ _The place smells foul, rotten._ _  
_ _He hit me too many times in the head dragging me here._ _  
_ _Dying in a place like this… why, why, why, why??_ _  
_ _  
_ He did not remember who or when. He thought it might have been sometime in the hospital. Somebody took his hands, and said innocently enough, with the best of intentions. “After something bad happens, there’s no doubt something good will happen. Life is a plus minus, it all evens out eventually. There’s a reason the world is like this.”

Komaeda had told Hinata something like that when he was trying to explain his luck cycles. He had smiled with the serenity of embracing everything both good and bad luck and said. “The bad luck just means the good luck is on the way.”

_For trash to suffer. For trash to die. Trash which owes everything to._

The murderer kept a single television playing onscreen while he waited for news of Komaeda’s kidnapping to be announced. It had never come, but just once he happened to be awake while it was on. He saw Munakata’s face appear onscreen, giving a speech in front of the entire assembfled hope’s peak. His white hair was dazzling, it showed him a dazzling light he had never seen before.

_The dazzling hope._

Hinata remembered this speech because at the same time it was playing, he had ditched his classmates to look through the window leading to the faculty room which had the only tv in the school. He ignored the whispers on how Hinata was being an obsessive weirdo with his head in the clouds, a wannabe fanboy again and instead pressed his face up the glass, smiling widely, his face flushed and full of life.

“We admired the same thing didn’t we? That’s why you thought I could understand you but I…” HInata let his head hang to the side, they were no longer on the island or in the trash filled basement. Instead Hinata was lying on the ground, red pixels falling from his body like bloody, squares around him leaving his body with every twitch of pain.

“When it suited you you hated me, when it suited you, you loved me as well. You denied every part of me, you embraced me at the same time. It was always to your whims, and the desperate to be loved me just went along with it. That wasn’t mutual understanding.”  
  
“Fine, you’re right.” Hinata grabbed the end of the spear and pushed it back through his chest as he struggled to stand up once more, his legs shaking, litching in and out. “I’ve never really understood you, and I still don’t but…I’m still your friend. I won’t leave you here alone. Even if I have to beat you up and drag you back.”  
  
“Leave me here?  Hinata-kun…” He looked at the great hope standing up once more. It was because he had such talent, even if it was forcibly inserted into him. “You’re not going to beat me up and drag me back. You’re fundamentally incomplete, you have control over good luck but not bad. You know, the enemy’s special attack will miss a vital area, you’ll bump into a girl around a corner, you’ll get caught up in a murder, you’ll be spared by the whim of the enemy, you will be told you have the luck of the devil, you’ll be acquianted with the younger sister of your enemy, you’ll come across your rival in a pinch and make ammends with him, you’ll coincidentally meet your friends on vacation, you’ll fight from strongest to weakest in a tournament, when all is lost you’ll come up with a strategy to turn the tables. Talent doesn’t matter, the success of all main characters, is simply a matter of luck, the plot armor they’re wearing and right now my luck far exceeds yours. It doens’t matter how many talents you have or how strong of a final boss, now that I have the luck of a main character in my favor I’ll win.”  
  
“Komaeda, just tell me what you want… please. I just want to go back with you. What’s left for you if you stay here?”  
  
“Who said I wanted to stay here? What I want is to go back with you too… What I want is your body.”  
  
“Ummm… dude is this really the time?”  
  
Komaeda twirled around on the heel of his foot, turning his head back and breaking into total laughter. “Stuuuuuuupid. Iiiiiiiidiiiiiiot! Ihihihihihihihihi! It doesn’t matter how much talent they pump into you, somebody born dull like you is never going to get better. You could have at least tried to talk more like the brilliant Kamukura I admired until the end. Ufufufahaha. I… I want to take over that body of yours. Steal it for myself. The same way Junkai wanted to take the original Enoshima-san. That way, I can become an existence called ultimate hope. Come on, don’t you want to save the body of the dying me…? Hinata-kun?”  
  
Komaeda took a few more windin, dancing steps forward as he reached out and plucked a rope from nowhere. It was in the form of a noose, he guided it around his neck and laughed further. He made sure it did not stag by holding one single finger to tug at it away from his neck. “Junkai’s planned execution for me. I was going to sit on a circus tight rope, and one by one ropes like this would be severed until all of my luck ran out. What point do you think she was trying to make? That my luck would always run out in the end? That I was just a clown?”  
  
“The hell if I know.” Hinata’s impulsiveness got the better of him and he rushed forward, only to be caught on a rope and trip. There were suddenly far too many topes in between them, overlapping each other, getting knotted, as Kumagawa had said once _The strings tying us together have become too twisted._

“Hinata-kun come on. We’ll always be together. I can fill my empty self up if I devour you. Make me feel alive, Hinata-kun.”  
  
“Nagito! Shut the hell up with that stuff already! Maybe I don’t understand you.”  
  
“I don’t blame you, it’s unbecoming for a god like you to understand lowly humans.”  
  
“Even if I don’t understand you, I know that’s not what you want!” Hinata said, struggling against the ropes which were pulling him back. “Don’t you want to become a video game designer?”  
  
Suddenly all the ropes which were falling stopped. Suddenly the traffic in the street stopped. Suddenly, it was like everything in the whole world stopped.  
  
“Uh… uh….” Komaeda moved forward so suddenly, so rashly that he broke the rope around his neck in two and rushed forward to stand over Hinata. He was in such a rush he almost tripped over his own feet, before spinning around, regaining his balance and then right in front of Hinata he kicked him uselessly, like a child throwing a tantrum. “Why do you know! Why do you know! Why do you know! Why do you know! Why do you know!”  
  
His kicks were weak, but still he made Hinata cough in a little bit of pain. “I can’t be! You peeked! I’m all exposed! You pervert!”  
  
“Yeah, I took a look. I peeked into your closet. I saw what you were hiding in there.”  
  
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! I said nobody can ever open that door. I don’t even want Hitoyoshi-kun to see it.”  
  
Hiden inside Komaeda’s closet, there was several notebooks filled with sketches and detailed writings of drafts piled up on each other. “  
  
“You have such pretty handwriting just like a girl’s. Your art style is really cute as well. Furthermore, all the puzzles you came up with were genius. You can really imagine a game that would be played from the player’s perpsective and be most enjoyable for your audience. The plot was confusing as hell man! Everything you come up with sounds so absurb, but I think that’d be a part of your auteur design identity. What’s with that dating sim you were designing too? That was pretty perverted.”  
  
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Koameda simply screamed again, gripping his head unaware of what to do.  
  
“All of the lore and backstory you came up with was so thick and overwhelming. I read through all of it, I could tell how much thought you put into it. I know you’re afraid of being misunderstood when you express yourself so you must have wrote it out and rewrote it again.”  
  
“K-kill! Nevermind, I changed my plan. I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill myself. The lover’s suicide was a better ending.” He kicked Hinata in the stomach once more.  
  
“It’s useless to kill me. You never really thought about it? Didn’t you leave behind such game documents in the real world? Eventually someone will clean up your room and find it. But, if we go back right now we can burn the evidence if you’re that afraid.”  
  
“That’s such a stupid reason to return to the real world! In my shitty real body! I can’t act for a foolish reason like that!”  
  
“A reason like that, huh?” Hinata repeated, only to get kicked in the stomach once more. “Tell me then, what is a good reason to go back? Nobody I talked to ever understood you, not me, not Zenkichi, not even Junko can get a full grasp of you. Kumagawa’s got too much of himself projected onto you to understand the full picture even if he’s close. To be honest, I’m not that attached to living. I’m doing it out of obligation because of all the people I killed. I’m sure if that was my only option, I’d sacrifice this body and let you have it to live a little longer. A kind person like you really would use that body to benefit all mankind unlike me. You would be happy, in the body of a god like that I’m sure you’d have fun. But… if you become like me, you won’t be able to create anything at all. I can’t do it either, music sounds dull to me, art colorless, you can save others maybe, but you won’t create a single thing you’ll just watch others rot away. You’d be getting the short end of the stick as far as I’m concerned.”  
  
Komaeda get on kicking him. “Shut up. This time. This time. This time. I will become happy.”  
  
“It’s not like you wanted to become ultimate hope! Not like you wanted to become happy! You were resigned to being a stepping stone right? You wanted to make video games right? Then why don’t you become one?”  
  
Komaeda had exhausted himself completely, just from kicking. He held onto his knees trying to prevent that fragile body of his from collapsing. “How can somebody so smart be so stupid? I don’t want people to see them, it was unskillful, embarrassing. My dream? Trash like me isn’t allowed to dream. I wanted to throw them out, but I was too embarrassed. So I just hid them instead!”  
  
“If you make a mediocre game that you had fun making, it will make a game made by an utlimate talent shine all the brighter. Don’t talk about what you created like that, Nagito. There’s not a single creation in this world that’s unwanted. Creation is embarrassing, dreams are embarrassing as well. Shouldn’t you face that embarrassment if you want to get stronger?”  
  
“Shut up… it’s not as easy as you getting a few talents inputted into him by needle. It’s not like I can make a game just by thinking about one.”  
  
“Yes, but you’ll never make it if you don’t allow yourself the chance to dream. I don’t think this happy dream was a bad thing, even if it kept me apart from you. I was being petty and jealous I’m sorry, I should have enjoyed your happiness. You deserved a glimpse at happiness at least. You deserved to see the possibility that you could have dreams for yourself, outside of talent. Unlike becoming an utlimate hope, or a happy person, you have to be human to become a game designer.”  The ropes around him started to loosen. Even bleeding from the side, even beaten up and laughed at as he was he still continued to approach Komaeda. He still held his arms open. “You know what? Some idiot is out there, volunteering to do something as sluggish as becoming the utlimate hope for you. Let a moron like Naegi Makoto-kun handle it. So, you can do some other sluggish thing. You had something you wanted to try right? Something you never got to do because only normal people did it and you were excluded?”  
  
“Something I want to do?” Instead of raising his foot this time he stumped backwards. He was scared of the understanding, scared of the forgiveness, too much weight he would be crushed this body of his too heavy he could not go on. “You don’t understand me! You don’t understand a damn thing about me!”  
  
“Interesting, it’s cute when you’re reduced to crude language you usually speak so beautifully, in such a reserved way like a princess. You’re right, even with all the analytical talents in the world I don’t know anything. I know nothing important. Because only you know about you. That’s why you’re the only person who can take care of you. And you are the only one who can grant your dream.”  
  
“Are humans allowed to randomly change their minds like that?”  
  
“You can because you’re human. There’s no meaning to any of our choices, it all becomes pointless in the end. What’s the point of reading stories that say ‘life sucks and then you die’, right? But I’ve always found those stories beautiful. Because people say those stories are distasteful, not worth being told, but there are people who live their lives like that they would be invisible if not for stories like that. Humans can see meaning even in something as simple as ‘life sucks and then you die’. It’s liberating. Everything you do for hope will eventually become despair. Hope will turn into despair, and despair will turn into hope again. An endless cycle that turns around and around without meaning. What was it that you said…? It’s like loading a saved game and getting worse each time, your character gets worse and worse, you build poorer and poorer stats. Isn’t that great? You get an infinite amount of retries! Even if you're doing poorly you can try forever. Because humans, as human, can do something over as much as they want! You’ll never achieve what you want in the end maybe, you’ll only get worse, you’ll only dwindle away, but every single human still has that chance. Even the characters in that story still have that chance, they struggled until they died in the end. Are you saying their struggles weren’t worth watching? Don’t you want to watch that? Don’t you want to be a part of that? Don’t stick up your nose and say life is meaningless so I won’t even bother trying. Don’t make the same mistake I did! It doesn’t matter what you do, so why not just do what you want?”  
  
_What he wanted?  
_He had been trying to shape and mold himself to what would be acceptable for others for too long. He had been trying to live without. He did not need a dog, parents, friends at school, love, or even a long life. He had let all of those things be taken as sacrifices, believing for merely existing he needed to have a price to pay.   
  
Yet in this imaginary world. A world where nothing truly mattered as it was one boy's delusion. The dream of a lonely boy. Where everything that transpired here would not affect the real world in any way. He realized how meaningless every sacrifice he had made was until this point. Perhaps he had known all along, and was trying to delude himself and twist the results with confirmation bias.   
  
There were times he did nothing in this world and it did not matter. There were times he tried to fight back and it did not matter. Like trying to choose to go left or right in a maze that shifts every single turn you make, the decisions you make the navigate seem utterly pointless. You feel like you'll never get out. The correct answer seems to be to lean against the wall, curl up and wait for starvation to set in.   
  
His life was one of trying to compromise with consecutive losses. He had tried to beg at the feet of the statues of the god, he had washed them with his hair, he had even defiled the beautiful marble with his dirty hands and yet no matter how many losses he accepted, he never felt like he amounted to anything.   
  
He was breaking more and more, knowing that one day he would fall apart, into small glass fragments. They might glitter beautifully for a moment but they would become dust in the end regardless. He could not heal, he could not repair, he could only break more, because the parts necessary to grow were missing. He had had them removed from his body a long time ago, as if trying to function with several organs sold on the black market and the scars on his chest still in tact.   
  
He wanted to just. Feel forgiven. Feel absolved. Feel satisfied for one single moment. Feel happiness, true, unending happiness that would not fade away.   
  
He had not been born to become happy.  
He had not been born for any reason at all.  
  
Then that boy who admired the same place that he did, who was empty and misshapen the same way he was. He told him that he did not need to be happy, that he did not need to become hope.   
  
Create.  
Become anything.  
There is no meaning, so create one.   
  
That was what he had been doing all along, right? It was just a delusion on his part he had been clinging too, but he took all of those successive miseries he endured and created something from them.   
  
The idea of making something with his own hands, any creation that came from him would be twisted, it would be mediocre trash. Most of all there was no way somebody would ever be able to understand a message he tried to put in a game. The thought of being misunderstood again was embarassing, embarrassing, embarrassing. It's not like he liked when he had to pause in conversation and missed social cues, when he kept tlaking until he saw how much others were staring at him, when all he wanted to do was talk about what he was excited about and people called him creepy for expressing that joy deep within his heart.   
  
He had already created a video game. This happy dream, this world, this delusion, he had modeled it and set the parameters in his head, and look how easily it fell apart, look how easily the others became unhappy with his creation.   
  
But then why... Even if he knew he would be talented, why had he filled all those notebooks? Why did he see the world as a game? Why did he always plan things and play games... it was all meaningless. He would be misunderstood. It would be mediocre. Anything created by him was destined to be forgotten.  
  
But...  
Kumagawa was always saying with a smile on his face.   
_It'll be fun. I just know it will.  
_Maybe.  
  
Create something.  
It would not fill in the missing parts of him.  
But it would be something.  
When he was nothing before.  
Something was not nothing.   
These hands he did not want to destroy anything with.  
So he went touch starved, so he tried to touch as little as he could.   
What were they for again?   
Maybe he could make something.   
_Maybe it could be fun._

Komaeda stopped backing away from Hinata. He let his head rest against Hinata’s shoulder, he wanted to sink it into Hinata’s chest but both boys were so tall that it was awkward. “I really didn’t want to become a game designer. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time. I don’t think I’ll be able to toss aside hope either, because I’ve been looking at that light for so long… but… People are inspired to hope by works of fiction right? I’m sure, my ameteurish trash will make the games produced by real talent shine, right?”  
  
“Mmm…” Izuru’s throat was dry, he had been talking for so long, and he tasted blood from his injuries. He wondered if he had ever spoke so long so continuously in his life. It was probably because, all of the things he had wanted to say to Komaeda, while they were apart, while he watched over his unconscious body, holding his hand, they had filled up his empty self so much, words bouncing around echoing again and again until he was full to bursting.  
  
“I don't trust that easily. The things you told me were probably just lies to get me to leave this world. I don't know if I'll be able to make them come true. Even if they were... even if your love is a lie, then I'll allow myself to be lied to by you.”  
  
“Hey, Nagito.”  
  
“Hm…?”

“Your hair’s grown longer. You should leave it long like that. If you were to put it up in a pony tail, that’d reall turn me on.”  
  
“Uh…”  
  
Before Komaeda could even process what had been said, Hinata Kamukura Izuru Hajime the boy he had met twice, and fell in love with twice, finally leaned forward and kissed him on the lips again.  
  
A kiss to wake up a prince.  
The world stopped.  
It should have stopped, in Komaeda’s mind it melted away. A romanticist, the world melted away into colors, all of them mixing and mixing together. He had finally made a splash, splashing against someone else.  
However, the only thing that changed was the color of his eyes, turning to their normal colorless state as his personality became a little less twisted, and the screw that had been embedded into his head came loose finally and fell behind him.

Kumagawa Misogi clapped from where he was watching. 『An amazing show. I was really inspired. Nagito-chan just went up and saved himself.』 Before Junko could even reveal herself from where she had been watching behind him, Kumagawa stood up and jumped down. 『Junko, you were watching me all along. I’m so flattered.』  
  
“You could see me? Then why the hell were you ignoring me? No wait… how can a loser like you ignore someone like me who's way out of your league? You should be looking up to me like some bright unreachable star in the distance… how far have I fallen exactly?”

『Oh well that. Umm, well I was just messing around really. It was funny watching you react when you didn’t get one whole attention.』  
  
“So what if I like attention that doesn’t mean I’m insecure. That just means I’m secure in the fact that everything I do is cool and worthy of attention. I mean, it’s human nature to admire the beauty of the stars right?”

『Junko copernicus called and he wanted to tell me that you’re not the center of the universe. Anyway as much as I’d love to continue this thematic piece of banter-』  
  
“Awe come on. I’ve had to do it with Kamukura-senpai this entire time, and he’s no fun. He doesn’t even play along.”

『Well that’s because playing with you usually results in injuries, Junko, you don’t play fair. Ah! So hard to resist the call of the banter. I love the snap of a quick quip! My quippers heart aches with desire, however! Let’s begin! I’m so glad you two came down here to rescue me!』 Kumagawa suddenly snapped his finger. Junko and Izuru jumped back, the whole floor exploding into screws. Izuru had let go of Komaeda and realized so at last moment, reaching out desperately for him.  
  
However a shadow had already taken him away. 『I don’t care about the others, but I won’t let you take Nagito-chan. None of you can appreciate his real value. Nagito-chan is so kind, he always held himself back, he always made sacrifices because he wanted to minimize the damage as much as possible, all he wanted was to be loved but he pushed others away for their safety. He starved himself for his whole life, and as a result people threw trash at him. Only a minus can understand the worth of another minus. You Izuru-chan, the perfect goods, you Junko, the perfect human, don’t look down on us with your pity, don’t reach for us.』  
  
Kumagawa turned away, holding Komaeda bridal style. As he slowly walked away, the world around them becoming more and more decrepit as Kumagaa’s heart lacked the ability to imagine such a functioning and happy world like this Junko screamed after them.  
  
“Misogi! I’m not looking down on you. I just wanted to see you again! Just for that purpose, I came all the way down here! Why won’t you look at me, even now? Why are you showing me your back, that’s like basically asking to get stabbed by Enoshima Junko’s playbook. It’s basically not my fault at that point.”

Kurokami Medaka took Junko aside and warned her before this mission.  
That Kumagawa Misogi holds back and fools around, but once he starts talking seriously that is when you always have to watch out.  
Because just as easily as her, he could break things, dreams, people, he did it with a smile on his face accepting all of the guilt that came with it as he walked over them.

『It’s because you remind me so much of the Ajimu-san I once loved. The one I once thought would save me.』  Kumagawa said, turning his head back to look at her, bending it back swiveling at an unnatural angle like his head itself was attached on a screw. 『I’ve been through this so many times before, that’s why you’re so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, utterly boring to me.』


	9. The World of Ice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tokyo Ghoul (Furuta vs Kaneki)  
> The Graveyard Scene is a reference to SSSS Gridman which also takes place in a dream world.

“How did they just disappear?”  
  
“I thought you were supposed to know everything Enoshima Junko, you really didn’t see this coming?”  
  
“I already told you Kumagawa is the one element that remains slightly unpredictable that’s what makes him interesting.”  
  
“It’s interesting how you always lecture others for being unable to talk about their feelings in time to avert a tragedy scenario in your games, but how useless you end up being in situations like these.”  
  
Their voices were lost in the sudden downpour. The water came to wash them away. The world was destined to end with a flood after all.  
  
It seemed to rain here a lot.  
It made sense.  
This world was the heart of two lonely boys.  
The reflection they saw of each other in the water.

The opposite of hope is apathetic acceptance.  
An absolutely sure apathy that allows you to approve of all things.  
_Yes that’s fine._ _  
_ _It can’t be helped._ _  
_ The opposite of hope.  
A status queue.  
He was absolutely still.  
  
Kumagawa’s eyes were placid with that stillness, they turned blue, a deeper, clearer blue. Such a failure at being a human, unable to even despair properly, lowlier than Enoshima Junko he had accepted everything with such a boring and stonelike look on his face.  
  
As the raindrops fell, the waters surface rippled slightly, and the raindrops themselves made soft noises, like the soft plucking of a string instrument,b ut when those strings were done vibrating they too returned to stillness, silence.  
  
Every time Komaeda had looked at Kumagawa he compared him to water. He compared the division of the world between his world and Kumagawa’s world like two boys staring at each other from opposite sides of a pond and convincing themselves it was their own reflection.  
  
Or was it the other way around? Deluding themselves into believing that another world lied beyond the pound, made up of that reflection. He had forgotten it already.  
  
Feels like water.  
Kumagawa Misogi.  
A still stretch of water undisturbed by the rain.   
A stretch of water that reflected back.   
Kumagawa Misogi had spent so much time around him, nowadays it felt like the boy was always by his side. He was one of the few people Komaeda could never convince to leave him, and yet it somehow told him that Kumagawa Misogi was just a delusion on his part.  
That Kumagawa Misogi had never even existed in the first place. That Komaeda had imagined a person named Kumagawa MIsogi from his won ego and imagination then he would believe it.  
It was like no one was actually there.  
Still water.  
Water was shapeless, formless, he could seize up and become something else in an instant. He could flow like a river, and hit just as hard. He could also be destroyed and scattered like water, fall into the sewers, seep underneath the earth, and eentually recollect himself no matter how many times he was splashed uselessly against the pavement.

However, because of that quality he was also like a river running he could never be the same person twice.  
He ran, ran, ran, from Izuru and Junko. He ran through the rain that was already falling down, hoping to bury this whole world, hoping to drown his heart in water. Like a child whose head was pushed into the water by his own parent’s one too many times, he had stopped struggling to breathe and decided to accept it instead. How eerie it must have looked when you pushed a child’s head into pitch black water water and they ignored even their basic instinct to struggle and try to raise their head towards the light more.  
  
Deeper, deeper, deeper. Komaeda watched as Kumagawa’s eyes turned a deeper blue, a purer blue, the darker they became paradoxically the more pure they seemed to become. Komaeda had always longed for a pure white hope, without conflict, but it seemed in Kumagawa purity was a bad thing. If he had let himself feel a little bit pain, if he had let himself feel a little bit of anger, he might know how to deal with those emotions, even if they would stain his purity.  
  
He didn’t need to be a perfect victim. He did not even need to keep being a victim. He did not need to fit someone else’s standards of a victim. _I just want you to keep being my senpai._ Those were the words Komaeda wanted to say as he observed those eyes from underneath him, but how could he ever phrase something so straightforwardly.  
  
Before he could even form the words with his lips he forgot. He forgot the colors of city lights being washed away by the rain and blurred, he forgot the feeling of Kumagawa holding him so intensely as he ran away.

『 _I didn’t want to see her again. I didn’t want to see her again. I didn’t want to see her again._ 』

『 _Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands. They’re touching me all over.._ 』

『 _Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me. You can all just go die._ 』  
  
Komaeda Nagito stood in a graveyard. He guessed he had followed his senpai here, but forgotten the reason why. Oh, to visit the girl he loved, the girl who killed herself. He had even forgotten the entire walk here.  
  
He really was such a no good kouhai. He stood behind Kumagawa, who was staring up at the sky. He looked like he expected rain to fall on his face but there was not a single cloud in the sky.  
  
Komaeda wanted to be gentle, but he had no idea how to broach the subject. “Your face looks weird, senpai.”

『It’s nothing.』  
  
“That’s exactly what your face looks like.”

『Ahahahaha. Nagito-chan is so funny. I just spaced out.』  
  
“Your head is nothing but empty space.”

『All humans are fundamentally empty, really you’re just stating the obvious. Except I’m not...』  
  
“You’re not.”  
  
『It doesn’t matter. I like cemeteries in winter just before christmas.』Even as Kumagawa smiled, water had slicked back his hair, and was dripping down his face. Not a single cloud in the sky Komaeda could see water running down the side of his face, dripping off his chin. Kumagawa’s clothes were wet as well he looked like he had just survived a drowning. Kumagawa himself did not even seem to notice, as a sickly smile spread across his face.

“Winter? But it’s golden week and… you wouldn’t be happy to visit a grave. Even you’re not that creepy, senpai. I feel like I’m forgetting something.” Komaeda reached out and curled his finger in one of the many swirls of his hair. Grasping his thoughts felt like grasping at clouds, they looked like they had matter until he tried to close his fingers around them and they turned into wisps.  
  
『You’re always forgetting something. Your brain is terrible.』  
  
“True, but… there’s something lacking.”

『What is…?』

“We... we're not..." 

Kumagawa’s sharp glare told him. There had been something lacking from them all of their lives, as long as Komaeda needed it, he would comfort and soothe him all he could. He would embrace him even if it was a twisted version of embracing themselves. They had learned to live with what was lacking.  
  
Why now.  
Why was it any different. Why was he suddenly implying it could be any different. The cold eyes of the drowning boy, like the dead eyes of a fish at the bottom of the ocean, suddenly they were burning with resentment that stared at Komaeda.  
  
Then suddenly his expression changed again and he was smiling pleasantly. 『If you’re having fun, what’s it matter? Do you not have fun when I’m around you?』  
  
The first person who had ever approached Komaeda and tried to treat him like a friend. It was not any of the dazzling examples of hope, it was not even Enoshima Junko who corrupted him and turned him to despair. Kumagawa reached for his hand and placed it over his own face. After that the two of them played gachapon together. They sat on the roof talking together. Kumagawa walked with him to class together. Unlike other people who were put off by his self degrading and his wild philosophies, Kumagawa listened and argued back in his own way. They were things friends did but never did he once consider Kumagawa a friend, just someone who would eventually be removed. He was too much like despair.  
  
He had forgotten all of that though. Komaeda only existed for this single moment standing together in the graveyard, the rest of his memories were vacuous moreso than normal.  
  
“That’s not what I mean. I feel like we need to talk about something. We've forgotten about something important and we've been avoiding it the entire time. We can't forget it.” He had finally reached a resolve, after having all of his other ways of seeing the world broken apart in front of him, after seeing that the world was imaginary.  
  
『And it’s even more important than me?』

“No, it’s important even to you. We shouldn't forget about those things, even if they hurt us.” Komaeda looked over Kumagawa’s shoulder, and saw the gravestone they had went to visit. The suicide of the girl he loved no… the name of a girl was not written there. It was his own name. “Lion-dog Tree Branches.” and then “Calm Below the Dipper.” It was only after staring for a few moments that he recognized his own face again. For a moment he thought such a pale face, with such shocking white hair was a shinigami standing behind him. Forgetting his own face, how helpless could he be.

Purpose, purpose, purpose. Someone who looked like that, somebody who had forgotten his face that easily had a purpose? Lion Dog, those were the statues that stood guard at shrines in shintoism. That was right he wanted to be someone who could stand at the feet of the gods of talent and protect them.  
  
Was that all he cared about the gods?  
Even if he was just a dog to them?  
Was he going to sit in Shibuya station forever until he became a statue like Hachiko?  
Perhaps he could be rubbed for good luck like a mission in The World Ends with You.  
Could Komaeda Nagito care about anything else besides talent?  
  
He did not even question why the name was on his grave, but then he remembered. He had been killed in the killing game, and that was why he had started to dream in the first place. “You still haven’t forgiven yourself for killing me have you.”  
  
As Kumagawa grit his teeth, a crack formed in the smooth reflective surface of the grave. That was right the stone had become so shiny because of the rain. He looked up and saw that it was raining after all. He looked back to see Kumagawa still looking forward pretending that it was not, even though both of their hair his curly, Kumagawa’s shaggy and straight, was falling over their eyes. “This is a dream.”

『Wouldn’t you rather dream forever?』  
  
“Dreams are things you wake from. That goes for everyone. Even you, Kumagawa-senpai.”

『I wish I could stay in a dream forever.』  
  
“I can’t stay with you. I can’t let you stay here. Because I’m the one who trapped you here.” The memories were blurred in his head, and they threatened to wash away like water colors under all of this rain, but he grabbed onto them with everything he had. Funny, he never had a strong sense of self before, and him and Kumagawa were so close they could easily blend together and become indistinct, being mistaken for one another. But now he was holding onto that self harder than he ever had before. Komaeda wondered, he truly did if the situation was reversed if his actions had led to Kumagawa’s death and then presented with the opportunity to either stay and watch over the sleeping Kumagawa or leave to the real world with Hinata what would he do?  
  
He would leave, most likely. He would prefer it if Kumagawa came back alive, but he would probably just see him as a stepping stone he had to step over. He would say something like Komaeda should be honored to use as a stepping stone because he was only ever meant to be a pebble on the side of the road.

Yet, Kumagawa did not believe Komaeda to be an acceptable sacrifice. He stayed with him in the dream world. Now that he thought about it, had there ever been one time in the past that Komaeda ever returned Kumagawa’s good will?  
  
He insulted him.

He left him for other friends.  
He betrayed him and put him in this simulation as Kamukura’s accomplice. The realization suddenly clicked into place for him. _Why doesn’t Kumagawa want to be around the people he loves? Oh, it’s because I called him trash so many times unworthy of being around the talented people he admired he started to believe it._ _  
_ _It’s not nice to call others trash, is it?_

Empathy was not his strong suit.  
He had never truly hated Kumagwaa though. And just as it was wrong for Kumagawa to hold it all in, only to retaliate in the end by killing. It was also wrong of him to work out his own personal issues on Kumagawa.  
  
He was not thinking of saving himself from Kumagawa’s sudden desperate kidnapping. It was the last thing on his mind. If Kumagawa wanted to dream a little bit longer and did not want to be alone, Komaeda would stay with him.  
  
However, he knew that as always Kumagawa was acting the opposite way of what he wanted. That was why he thought in this moment, he could save Kumagawa. He had no chance of saving someone who carried the torch of hope, but someone like Kumagawa, a lowly existence like himself, somebody who twisted their body around a single spark hoping to conceal it in the rain and stop it from being extinguished. That kind of pesosn he could..  
  
『I’m happy to be trapped.』  
  
Komaeda who hated conflict, who hated disagreeing with others, who hated speaking up his own emotions and trying to parse them, spoke up then. “No. You’re not. I did something wrong to you, and you did something wrong to me. Get angry at someone when they hurt you for once. Establish boundaries for your ego. Stop accepting everything because you resent it either way in the end.”

『What are you lecturing me for, Nagito-chan? Have you been observing me? But you only observe hope, and there’s no hope in a person like me. You’ll never witness the all consuming hope that obliterates all tragedy from the world with me, tragic comedy after tragic comedy, that’s all I’ve seen. 』

“Hope? Hope is not the absence of tragedy. It’s what endures tragedy! It’s something you have to protect in the face of a vast and callous indifference in the world, it’s a single point of warmth in a world of ice. It’s not shattered by hardship. It’s fighting even when you know you’ll be destroyed. It’s deciding to love knowing one day the person you love will die. What kind of lame hope emerges when there is no obstacles to face, no despair to overcome, a dream world with no troubles? I wouldn’t even tell that cruel of a lie. That lie is not hope. Hope will not lie to you like that. You always told such kind lies Kumagawa-senpai, I was always impressed by how much you could spin lies to soothe and comfort others when you wee the one who needed to be comforted the most but I know you wouldn’t tell a lie like this… you wouldn’t lie to yourself and say the only world you want is this one. You never once told the people you were comforting that there wasn’t going to be any pain ahead, that they weren’t going to struggle more.”  
  
Staring inside of a mirror imagining a world. Pretending Kumagawa existed in an entirely untouchable world for himself that he would never reach. But there is no world inside of a mirror. This isn’t some fantasy or a fairy tale.  
  
They needed to leave together to the real world. Komaeda would reach him, even if it meant smashing through that mirror, smashing the image of himself, and cutting his hand on the shards of glass as he reached forward.  
  
Humans were separated, the boundaries between them were absolute. But just sitting around all day contemplating, ruminating about the fundamental aloneness of human nature was not going to fix that. Even in another world entirely that did not mean they could not be reached.  
  
Kumagawa stumbled backwards, grasping onto his head. The gravestone shattered, and then the world of the gravestone shattered as well and they were standing in the rainsoaked streets again.

『I don’t care about hope or despair, stop talking about that already. It’s all you guys ever talk about I swear, it’s not so nuanced a discussion that we can drone on about it that long, not like say the depth and complexity of shonen manga.』  
  
Enoshima Junko skidded to a stop. Her boots dragging across the wet ground. Hinata Izuru standing behind her spoke up first. “Give Nagito back, Kumagawa-senpai.”

『You don’t own Nagito-chan. He’s his own person. How presumptuous of you Izuru-chan.』  
  
“Junko say something serious to him already, this might be our only chance.” Izuru said as the rain streaked down his spiky hair as well, causing it to fall flat on his head.

『There’s absolutely nothing interesting that boring girl could say.』  
  
“Misogi do you want to look at my panties?”

Kumagwaa MIsogi immediately dropped Komaeda and turned around on his heel.『Panties? Junko’s panties? You will show me them, Junko? I wanna see, I wanna see! Show me! Show me!』Red faced, Kumagawa spun on his heel and skipped around in the rain until he was in her face.

“I said something serious!” Izuru spat back at her. “I know you don’t care about anybody else that was trapped in this game or the consequences of your actions but I thought you at least cared about Kumagawa being taken away from you.”  
  
“I am serious. The honey trap is most effective.”

『I’m happy to be trapped again. I think we should forget about that existentialsim stuff and spend the rest of the chapter talking about panties.』  
  
“That’s right if you don’t like reading that kind of thing, skip ahead.” Enoshima Junko said.  
  
“I can’t skip ahead, this is a conversation I’m physically watching!” Izuru whined in the background.

『Anyway, white panties are the way to go. Pure white, just like my soul.』  
  
“Oh, so we’re really going with this bit. You know though, I’m sorry to criticize you when I’m the one who got you all riled up but I can’t agree there.”

『Hmm, so are we on opposite sides here? Love and hate, hope and despair, black and white panties!』  
  
“If you want to put it that way, then yes! The opposite sides of a shiny coin!” Junko said as she jumped up in excitement. The two sides of a coin metaphor was her favorite one to use.  
  
『Aren’t you just giving a two-faced response as usual?』  
  
“Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to say I’m against white panties. Panties are special because you can choose any color you want for them. A world of just black and white is a childish point of view, it's no fun.”

『I think the people who exist in the black and white world of shonen jump live their lives just fine.』  
  
“We weren’t talking about manga, we were talking about panties, Kumagawa-senpai. You can only have one, do you want manga, or do you want panties? Choose!”

『I have to make choices! This is why too cruel! Why don’t you ask me to choose between a mother and a child dying instead?』  
  
“That sounds oddly specific were you in fact referencing an event that happened in another manga?”

『I would never reference manga in the middle of a conversation that is my least favorite thing to do.』  
  
“Colors may be what destroys this world, who knows - well, I know!”

『I don't know how to reply to that ominous panties related foreshadowing.』  
  
"Hey, you know when people interact their souls, I mean their panties get dyed a different color. I wonder what color I've dyed you."

『I’m not sure how to reply to that monologue either. It’s not like I’m trying to reject all colors. I just think a pure white existence is the only way to live.』

“You guys are so obviously not even talking about panties anymore.” Kamukura spoke up, but nobody present responded.  
  
“Hmm. Well, yes, only black is absorbing everything, the combination of everything, it devours everything.”

『It seems like no matter what our views are always destined to be at odds. It’s about time we admitted something.』  
  
“What might that be?”

『There’s nothing particularly sexy about black underwear.』  
  
“You said it!”  
  
High five.  
The two of them came to an understanding over their taste in underwear.

“There’s a whole spectrum of feelings people have about different colors, pitch black and invoke emotions in one person and completely different emotions in another person. Pretending pitch black is bad, and pure white is better is just following the norms, the status queue. Wearing only white panties, and only black panites would be equally bad.” Junko said, suddenly speaking deeply again.  
  
『Spectrum. Colors. I finally understand.』Kumagawa nodded along. Following this scene to it’s logical conclusion. I’m just kidding of course. Now that Kumagawa was done screwing around, he dropped a screw from his sleeve and held it in his hand pointing the end at Junko. Several screws at once appeared in Komaeda's green coat, tying him down to a wall.  
  
“Nagito!” Hinata yelled after him.

『He’s fine. He’s always wanted to be jesus just let him be happy.』Kumagawaw said waving his hand in the air, before turning to Junko. 『You should have just let me run away. I reeeeeeeally don’t want to fight you, but I can’t disappoint our viewers who are expecting this scene to end in a shonen fight climax now can I? 』  
  
“Misogi. The only person watching you here is me. Just tell me what you’re feeling. Everythings’ all reversed, everyone’s playing the wrong roles, you’re supposed to be the loser prince who rescues me, you’re supposed to be the one doing the boring talky parts, while I’m the sexy, charismatic and amazing character that everybody loves.”

『Junko, I don’t want to kill you.』

“That’s it, like I’d let myself get killed by a loser like you. Especially when someone awesome like me wasn’t even good enough to kill me-”

『That’s why, I’ll kill you!』She should have expected such a response. He rushed forward aiming a screw straight for her heart, the heart as empty and cold as the world around it but before Enoshima Junko even moved Izuru threw himself in front of her. A screw when through his stomach and he coughed blood.

Junko tilted her head to the side in slight acknowledgement. “Hinata-senpai’s playing the hero again how expected, but he’s doing it for me that he hates how unexpected.”  
  
Hinata did not even look back. He kept his eyes fixed forward on Kumagawa. “I’m not doing it for you. I promised Kumagawa-senpai, I would bring him out of here. I should have been the one to stay behind in this dream but like always I was a coward.”

『That’s fine Izuru-chan I like that cowardly side of you.』  
  
“It’s not fine. You kept your word and watched Nagito, but I…That’s why this time. I won’t fail. I’ll keep my promise to become you friends.”

『Saying this time for sure I won’t fail when you have a history of failing and running away means absolutely nothing, Izuru-chan and...』  
  
A kick.  
Izuru went skittering across the rain soaked streets. The city lights blurred behind them. A hollow and empty city as all the people Komaeda had imagined had disappeared. It was like all life had been plucked dry leaving only the bones of a corpse.  
  
『You’re not going to resolve this by beating me. Here’s a little secret. I… I’m actually pretty strong you know.』A grin spread like a slow sickness across his lips. As his eyes narrowed into crescents he seemed to be grinning with them as well. 『What about you Junko? Just going to sit back and watch like usual? Well, that’s fine, that’s all you’re good for anyway.』

Hinata’s hair whitened, his eyes stayed red as bookmaker took affect. The same one he had been under during the trial to give him Kumagawa’s confidence. He was not sure if he was being weakened or strengthened. Kurokami Medaka said this once, Kumagawa was a lot stronger than he gave himself credit for.  Always weak and vulernable, always strong and enduring a walking paradox.

『Isn’t this the part where you uhhhh? Give a heroic speech about friendship or whatever. That’s what the hero would do.』  
  
“I don’t want to be the hero. I don’t want you to be the villain. Kumagawa-senpai just come back.”

『It’s better for everyone else if I stay here. Nobody will get dragged into misfortune again, and I can keep on living. An ending where everybody is happy.』  
  
“I don’t want an ending where everybody is happy. Sounds boring. I thought an ending where everyone is miserable was more your thing? The world made you miserable enough, so why do you care so much that your presence just contributes to the world’s misery? Pay it forward.”

『Don’t try sounding like me to convince me. You’re only sounding like the person I hate the most.』Kumagawa said as he rushed forward finally. Izuru threw off his jacket leaving only the white button up shirt underneath.  
  
PItch black rushed towards pure white. Pitch black stood still as pure white Kumagawa rushed towards him. Wait, which was pitch black, which was pure white? The borderlines were not so distinct anymore, the metaphors were getting mixed. Maybe it was better that way.

『Kuma-Kuma-slash!』Kumagawa said as he brought down one of his large screws in a wide arc. Izuru let the blow move by him and caught his hand by the wrist, only to suddenly be surprised as dual wielding screws Kumagawa brought up another screw ina n upward arc forcing him to jump back. As he retreated, Kumagawa went after him. 『Whassa matter, hmm??? Gimme a heoric speech like you did with Nagito-chan, my special interest is maga, go go!』  
  
Izuru tried to duck and weave out of Kumagawa’s attacks but just like the fight with Komaeda his foot slipped on the raidsoaked ground. He left an opening causing Kumagwa to appear next to him suddenly centimeters away from his face, and slap hard the side of his neck. There was a much smaller screw than the ones he usually wielded lodged into it now. 『Now you look just like a real frankenstein, you’re so cuuuute like that..』

On his all black form, the only shape Hinata could make out on Kumagawa’s face was his pure white smile. Then suddenly he turned his head to the side and saw images flashing by in the puddle as soon as his blood dripped into it, the puddle became more distinct.

『Oh no no no, this is no good, my memories are leaking out of me.』

 **😈First Volcano HighSchool: The first school I ever transferred to after being kicked out of Ark Middle School. I lost everything when I lost Ajimu-san. 😈** **  
** **  
** 『Huh…? You’re not a girl.』Kumagawa said standing behind the school. On his first day, a note had been left in his shoe locker. Even though he had just lost his final love, he was quite the romanticist. He had decided not to give up schooling and ever since going to high school, he thought if he could make friends with someone more powerful than Ajimu Najimi there would still be a way to save her from herself before the seal on her was undone and she killed herself.  
  
He, Zenkichi, Medaka had failed to become friends in the end. He realized why, it was because he was weak, the weak him had lost to his own emotions at envy and fear that Ajimu-san would turn her attention to them. THen, in the end he had been so weak he had failed to even defeat Ajimu and save her from herself. He could never be a main character with that vigorous weakness, but he could be a supporting character in someone else’s life he thought.  
  
He found a note in his locker and wondered if somebody just wanted to be friends with the mysterious transfer student. However when he arrived behind the gym what he saw was an entire gang of boys in white coats. One of them was dragging a sign behind him. Kumagawa thought that was impressive, just like the Akune-chan he had once tried to be friends with.  
  
Then suddenly he realized as they circled around him that it was too late. “You’re the demon Kumagawa right? Who gave you permission to transfer to our school…?”

『Oh, I paid somebody to forge my papers and cheated on the entrace exam. I didn’t know you guys were all so scholarly.』  
  
“Oi shut it we’re not. I heard the last school you were at you murdered a girl.”

『How would you know that? Are you a murderer too?』Kumagawa tilted his head glaring at the boy with orange hair that looked like Kuwabara from Yu Yu Hakusho to him. He had known absolutely nothing at all about the boy’s situation, not even his name, that had just been a wild guess. 『Is that why you’re suddenly so attracted to me?』  
  
“Shut the hell up! Pulverize him until he’s nothing left boys”  
  
The boys around him descended on him. Kumagawa ducked to dodge the first one and threw the second one over his shoulder. He was used to random ambushes by this point, people in groups tended to move in predictable patterns. However suddenly, he looked to his side and saw something was sticking out.

『Hey, hey, hey, hey, that’s...』  
  
“Who the hell brought a blade!”  
  
“What does it matter boss? He’s even lower that street trash like us, they won’t bother to investigate him when he’s killed.”

『Hey, hey, are you serious?』Kumagawa said as he collpased onto his knees,a nd faceplanted forward tasting only the dirt and the blood in his mouth. He was quite the jokester, it was odd to ask if things were serious, but the question was stuck on his head on repeat again. _Are you serious? Are you serious? Are you serious? Are you serious? Are you serious? Are you serious? Am I seriously going to die?_ _  
_

Kumagawa could accept everything but that. Death was the one thing he hated. Ever since the old man told him that everything would be better if he died, that it would be kind to let him die, because living wasjust the accumulation of bad karma, he had resolved to live and dirty himself as much as possible. Now he was dying in the dirt, on his first day in a new school after running away from Medaka. He would never see her or Zenkichi again and make things up for what he did.  Ajimu would be left in the room forever. He tried to struggle but his body died easily. He felt all the life drain out of him at once through the wound in his side until nothing but pitch black nubmness remained.  
  
That was the story of the first time he died. Jumped and stabbed after transferring to his first school. He woke up in a classroom and saw Ajimu Najimi sitting on the teacher’s desk and starng at him with her chin in her hand.  
  
“What a boring way to die.” She taunted him.  
  
Then suddenly his body seized again and he came to life, looking up at the gang that was getting rid of his body. He reached forward and grabbed one by the foot. He noticed the side of his body burned and realized they had been dragging him behind one fo their motorcycles with a chain wrapped around him.  Oh it must have been a reference to Achilles destroying hector’s body. No, they were too stupid for that kind of reference.  
  
“Shit he’s not dead!”  
“He really is a demon!”

He left them all beaten up in a pile around him, and walked away with his hands in his pockets. 『I wasn’t able to make any friends on my first day of school. This is definitely a loss.』He only lasted one day at that school before transferring.

『What are you doing showing my tragic memories? Stop that. I was happy when they all greeted me like that. When they were beating me into the pavement, I thought ‘finally they see me for the monster I really am. This is how I deserve to be received.’』

“...”

『Don’t start empathizing with me, that’s scaaaaaaaary.』

Kumagawa rushed forward once more. He jumped in the air and spun his body around, and Izuru had to duck to stop from receiving the blow. Kumagawa had a twisted, spontaneous and slap sticky way of fighting.  
  
Even when he claimed to be fighting seriously, he was not. Perhaps there was no such thing as serious for him, perhaps if he even took things seriously for a fraction of a second he would never stop crying, just like the sky above them. He would definitely go insane in that case.

Kumagawa brought his foot forward and kicked in the air, only for Hinata to throw his entire back bending backwards to dodge. He stared up at as he saw Kumagawa jump in the air, preparing another strike as he held a screw in both hands.

Hinata however did not even dry to dodge. The screw scratched across the side of his face, hurting one of his eyes as Kumagawa landed behind him. Kumagawa turned on his heel, completely surprised that Izuru did not try to dodge him in a jump attack that left such an obvious opening. 『What are you doing? Don’t be so loveydovey, damn it!』

**😈Flashback, my first time transferring to Hope’s Peak. There was a girl named Emukae-chan who was just like me, I really wanted to help her. She should have known better than relying on a guy like me. 😈**

『Yukizome-sensei please!』Kumagawa said as he dragged Emukae by the hand. There seeed to be something dripping off of her fingertips. He had found her in her room alone today and dragged her all the way out, she still wore the tattered reserve course uniform. 『You’re the one who took the Ultimate Class of Talented Eccentric Loners and turned them into a real class right?』

“Huh…?” A woman wearing an apron over a blue dress, with bright orange hair turned around. She saw a boy dragging a girl along holding her by the wrist instead of her hands. “Do I know you two…?”

『You should know Emukae-chan! You taught in her class for six months in the reserve course! She sat in the front row every day she told me about you!』  
  
“N… No… it’s not a big deal Kumagawa-senpai.” Behind him, Emukae nervously stuttered.  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry honey. I don’t remember you…” Chisa said, not even turning around to look at them.  
  
Kumagawa’s smile never wavered. He had expected that. The two of them were just faceless reserve course students after all, they might as well have had all of their features painted over in blue. 『It doesn’t matter, you’re a wonderful teacher. Emukae-chan really looks up to you she’ll listen to whatever you say so please. I found her cutting her wrists again this morning, can you please talk to her?』

Chisa had been looking towards the side of the campus sectioned off for the main course students. They side that they were not allowed to even step foot in, even though they were supposed to be going to the same school. “Oh um. Reserve course students aren’t really my responsibility. Have you tried talking to a guidance counselor about it.”

『Did you hear what I…?』  
  
“I’m sorry I’m going to be late to my kids. I hope you two cuties take care.”

『She wasn’t even listening...She only taught for a little while in the Ultimate Course she taught for six months in the reserve course. How could she not remember a cute girl like you Emukae-chan.』  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai it’s fine. Everything I touch dies…. So I should just die too right? I’m just terrible… I’m just troubling you like this and making you do embarrassing things for me.”

『No, no, no, Emukae-chan. It’s alright, don’t worry about it! I'm sure her entire class sucks, maybe they'll all out to be murderers or something! Everybody is just a terrible person waiting to happen, so don't worry about it.』Kumagawa moved her wrist and tugged on it pulling it closer to her.  
  
“Stop! Kumagawa-senpai! If you touch my hand-”

『Oh! So Mukae-chan can take Yasuke-chan’s hand, but not mine! It’s alright! No matter how terrible you did I will make it like nothing for you. 』Kumagawa said as half of his face began to melt away under her touched. He would not just take her hand and look her way, he would hold her hand.

“Hehe...eehehehe.”  
  
Emukae made soft silent noises, somewhat a mixture betewen laughing and crying as tears fell out of her eyes. She buried her head in his chest. “Waaaaaaaaaa”

『Alright, alright, don’t cry. Mukae-chan is so cute. I’m sure for looking away from us right now, her entire class will go die in a ditch somewhere so don’t be bothered by such a boring teacher, and Yasuke-chan too don’t be bothered by such a boring guy.』

Even though he held her to comfort her, half of his face melting off. Even though he would have erased those injuries as many times as she needed to, that was not enough to save that girl in the end.  
  
Yasuke threw him over his shoulder and onto the ground. Kumagawa picked up a screw that had been lying on the ground.  
  
“Stop it you two, stop! You both want the same thing why are you fighting!” The girl screamed at the two of them but they did not listen. “I thought you wanted to save this school.”  
  
“Shut up, I only care about saving one person.”

『Shut up, there’s no way I could get along with such a boring guy!』  
  
“Stop it, stop saying things like her!”  
  
Yasuke drove his foot into the side of Kumagawa’s face and then rose it up again. He stomped, and stomped, and stomped, until half of his face looked like nothing more than a bloody mess. Emukae’s eyes widened as she saw the same injury that she had made on Kumagawa’s face.  
  
Kumagawa was getting hurt because of her again. That boy who had comforted her, who had been the first person to every embrace and hold her like that while she cried. He was hurting himself over and over again protecting her.  
  
Emukae wrapped her hands around her neck. “Stop it, now the problem is gone! Now I won’t hurt anyone anymore so there’s no reason to-” Emukae could not talk anymore because a hole had been burned into her neck.  
  
Kumagawa immediately threw Yasuke off of him. He looked at Emukae who had fallen over, a smile still on her face. Her neck was half melted off, a hole in her body, an ugly hole that he could not look away from. Her rotten flesh still remained, yet there was no trace of Emukae left on that corpse.  
  
Emukae would never laugh madly, nor rant about love, nor smile ever again. He was looking at a rotten apple, she had chosen to drink the poison all on her own. A burnt up flower. He had known she was suicidal, but just put a bandaid over it like he always did, and then forced her to watch him and Yasuke fight like they were about to kill one another.

『Yasuke-chan what are we going to do?』  
  
“She’s a reserve course student. They’ll probably just cover up her death, damnit…”

『Yasuke...chan…?』

Kumagawa grabbed Hinata by hi hair in the present moment and ran along the side of the building dragging his face along the concrete. Still the boy’s body was motionless, there was no resisting him.  
  
Kuagawa threw her arm over his shoulder and tossed Hinata with everything he had, like he was skipping a rock on the water of the pond. Izuru’s body tossed about carelessly bounced on the tar of the street. It was a crossing intersection but nobody, nor any cars appeared to run him over. Still he could hear the ambient noise of traffic lights, and city noises behind him.  
  
He looked to the side and saw a child huddled up in the trash. Slowly but surely, he was sewing the head back onto a rabbit. That child had white hair, and wore a white long sleeved shirt, he could not be any older than five. He clutched the headless rabbit that was sitting next to him like his only earthly possession.

“There you go, Yuuki. Don’t worry no matter how many times you get hurt I’ll stitch it up for you, because you’re my best friend. What? No, those stitches are really really beautiful I promise.” The young boy said completely convinced of the conversation he was having with the stuffed animal was real. After he finished the final stitch the rabbits head sagged back into place. Kumagawa smiled at it, and hugged it close. He rolled over and tried to find a comfortable spot hiding behind the trash cans to sleep.  
  
『Hey sleepy head! Wake! Up!』Kumagawa slammed his foot hard into the side of Izuru’s head, He stomped and stomped, trying to make an expression on appear on Izuru’s emotionless face. 『I’m bored, I wanna play, let’s play house, let’s play house!』

In the background two hands wrapped themselves around Enoshima Junko. As she saw red nails come together over her mouth she realized who it was. Junkai was embracing her fro behind.  
  
“Are you the reason he’s still stuck here?” Junko asked, turning one eye back.  
  
“No, it wasn’t Komaeda-senpai either. Kumagawa-senpai stayed here because he wanted to stay here. The boy you find so interesting doesn’t exist. He’s a fake like me.”  
  
“Amazing how you accuse everybody else of being a fake but it’s not like you have some kind of complex, right?”  
  
“Kumgawa-senpai is just like everybody else. He’ll choose some stability over none at all, he’ll keep clinging to it over despair. It’s just he hasn’t been given a choice up until this point. He’s choosing to stay down here, he’s choosing the more boring option.”

“...”  
  
Junkai leaned close to whisper in your ear. “You realize that don’t you? You’re just watching because that’s who you are by nature, you won’t push yourself to do anything tat’s boring. Saving Kumagawa-senpai has become boring to you.”  
  
“...”  
  
“That was always going to happen.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You were always going to get bored of him, so why don’t you cut your losses now? Get it? Cut your losses? Dump the loser.”

“I wouldn’t be a world class spoiled brat if I gave up on what I wanted so easily.”  
  
“You’re taking his choice away.”  
  
“Oh my god I’m a manipulative bitch that is literally what I do. It’s pretty much the only thing I do consdiering I’m also a lazy bitch. How do you like not know this if you’re supposed to be me?”

As Izuru spat out blood, the blood in the water became another memory.

**😈 Yasuke-chan and I always argue, but I think that’s because we’re similar rather than different. This time we came close to killing each other but it’s not too late. 😈**

『Yasuke-chan let’s stop fighting. We can still save Mukae-chan, there’s still time.』  
  
“Besides her… you were the only one that knew about this, right?”

Kumagawa slowly turned his head around. He saw the look in Matsuda’s eyes and recognized it. It was the look in his own when he had walked towards Ajimu Najimi holding his hand out to rip her face off. The complete calm serenity that came with surrendering your mind, and letting your body move forward like a puppet.  
  
『Yasuke-chan, stop it… Mukae-chan wanted us to stop fighting.』 **  
**

“She’s quiet and you’re going to be quiet now soon, too.”

『Why are you forcing me to be the sane one? This is hilariously miscast. Yasuke-chan stop it, this is exactly what Enoshima-san wants you to do, we want the same thing!  』

“She has nothing to do with this… and you, you have nothing to do with this.”  
  
Yasuke’s shadow overtook his and suddenly Kumagawa found a pair of hands around his neck. He did not even fight back, because Mukae had asked him not to. He was just thinking how to salvage this, undo Mukae’s death, undo what had led to them nearly trying to kill each other, and what point to reset from to overcome Junko’s scenario.

『I can… I can undo it still.』  
  
“It shouldn’t be undone. Some things can’t be undone.”

『Yasuke-chan. I understand you! There was somebody I was like that once too! I did a lot of awful things for her, things you would consider disgusting. And because of that, I lost sight of who I was. Little by little. Yasuke-chan, you don’t know who you are without Enoshima-san right? That’s why you can’t lose her! I understand! 』  
  
“You’re too stupid to understand a thing. Stupid, ugly, reserve course trash.” Yasuke’s fingers tightened around his neck.

『But, even after I lost her I was able to live on.』  
  
“Are you telling me to let her die then…?

『No, I don’t want you to end up like me! If both of you were saved I would smile at that ending, but even if the worst comes to pass you can keep living. So stop… I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.』

“There’s nothing regrettable about this. You’re not like the last guy I killed. They won’t even look for your body, then… Junko and I will… We’ll...”

『Yasuke-chan I....』  
  
“Why did you even get involved in this? It’s because you were involved that things turned out like this.”

『I wanted to be your friend...』  
  
At that, Yasuke Matsuda gave a laugh. It was a hollow and empty laugh. Then in the next moment he twisted Kumagawa’s neck around until it snapped. Until the moment he died Kumagawa did not resist him, he just kept staring up at him, begging with his eyes. Then his lifeless eyes rolled and gazed on the floor. Matsuda dragged his body and stuffed it into a closet, trying to figure out where he would hide it next. He picked up the reserve course uniform from around Kumagawa’s back and then put it on deciding to imitate Kamukura with it.  
  
Kumagawa did not come back in time to watch the rest of the scene play out. His neck only untwisted and he sat up in the closet, holding the door open a crack to watch the ending Junko cradling Matsuda’s dead body, only to stomp it into nothing a moment later.  
  
When Junko had left with Mukuro he stumped out of the closet. His vision hazy, he slipped on Matsuda’s pink blood and fell face to face with what little twisted flesh remained of his face anyway. Tears welled in the corner of Kumagawa’s eyes.

『It’s all my fault, Yasuke-chan I’m sorry.』

In the present time, Kumagawa grew tired of kicking. 『Why won’t you fight back?』  
  
“Isn’t this what you always do for others?” Hinata finally spoke up, turning his head to catch Kumagawa in his red eyed gaze. “I wanted to know what it felt like, to simply do nothing but take blow after blow waiting for them to stop.”

『Stop it.』  
  
“How does it feel to be on the attacking side for once? How does it feel to be the one doing the stomping instead of getting stomped on?”

『It’s so fun. That’s just how it goes, you endure being a victim as long as you can and then you go on to victimize others.』  
  
“If you’re having fun then why are you not smiling?”

『Shut up.』

  
“Stop it this isn’t like you, Kumagawa-senpai.”

『I don’t know who Kumagawa is then.』

“I don’t know either, but I want to know.”  
  
The rain was washing the blood away. Kumagawa stumbled backwards from him. Kumagawa gripped the side of his face.  A sense of fatigue assaulted him as if he was carrying something so heavy on his shoulders, he looked as if he could collapse on the spot. He had dealt Hinata every hit in this fight, but somehow when he tried to break Hinata he looked like the more broken one.

『I gave up. I’m not going to bother explaining myself. I gave up on myself. Just leave me here.』  
  
He was practically begging at this point.  
  
“You're not the type to give up.”

『Not the... you think you know me…?』  
  
He wanted to flee from his despair. Should he just let them take Komaeda, they would probably settle for a deal like that. How could he convince Junko he was boring? How could he get her to leave him?  Even if it meant being unable to escape from loneliness afterwards.  
  
In the past, whether he was challenging foes, fleeing madness, trying to make friends, transferring schools, asking for the help of others fate had not cut him the tiniest slack. What could he do?  
  
Nobody believed in Kumagawa.  
Nobody expected anything from him.  
He was entirely unwanted, a child that made everything more complicated for everyone.  
His involvement was a guarantee things would turn into a mess.  
Yet, selfishly, again and again he had tried to involve himself in the affair of others.  
He’d ignored, brushed it off, seen his own stupdity and smiled, and thus arrived at his current state. Accepting everything but despite fighting again and again he never once confronted any of it. He did not know how to confront it.  
  
He had never been at the same school for more than three months, transferring to twelve different schools with hope’s peak as his 13th. He had never stuck around long enough to made friends. None of the teachers paid attention to him. He had to study and catch up with 13 different curriculums, before he would be attacked, ganged up on, and kicked out again.  
  
He had no parents. He had no school that he could call his own. Every adult turned their eyes away from him. How was he supposed to do the thing called growing up? Wasn’t it fine to stay a child in this dream land forever if the entire world did not want him to progress in any way?

『I didn’t do anything! I didn’t think of anything! I abandoned it all without a care! IThat’s how I’ve been living up until now! I’ve given up over and over again!』  
  
Destiny was laughing at him. Even if he stood tall, even if he fell on his knees and begged, if he tried it all on his own, if he tried to make friends, if he confronted everything, if he ran away fro everything, it was all the same end result.

『If I was capable of doing things I’d… I’d...I gave up a long time ago that's all it was.』  
  
From the bottom of his heart he had always wanted to help others.  
He wanted to save Ajimu.  
He wanted to take Zenkichi’s hand and mend the fight between him and Medaka and become friends.  
He wanted to be happy for Kouki when he left and made friends with Medaka instead.  
He wanted to keep others from being stolen away, but he could not, fate would not let him. He thought he could endure anything, that he was a heartless doll who did not feel pain, and the end result of that mindset was wearing away what little of him had remained when he came to hope’s peak.  
  
He had bragged about how good his endurance was. He had called it his only good quality. He had bet everything on it, but in the end all he did was throw himself into danger on purpose, sabotage himself on purpose, play the victim because that was all he knew.  What he considered his only good quality had betrayed him, turned him on his head and been used to victimize him again and again.

  
To all of that, Hinata had said it was easy to give up.  
  
“GIving up is unlike you, Kumagawa-senpai.”  
  
There was a light in Hinata’s eyes. A dazzling intense light. The one that always looked so far away from him, the one he had reached for even still. The one he mourned his inability to reach. But, he was wrong about Kumagawa. So wrong it was a veritable farce.

『I gave up! I can’t go back to you guys! My hands are empty, everything falls out of them, and then I have nothing left!』Stop looking at him! Just leave him alone! Hadn’t those two done enough to him? Couldn’t they let him run away and be in comfort for once! Nobody in the real world was going to comfort him. They were denying him this, even the ability to cry and give up. Just what did they even see in him? Just the thought of it completely disturbed him, he balshed his hand against the window beside him, shattering it and getting glass lodged into his hand. He further based it against the brick wall, again and again, blood splattering on the wall. 『Do you see this? This is what I am? This is all I am! I can only bash my fists against the wall! I have hope even though I’m powerless! I keep trying when I only make things worse!』

It was not a matter of talent. Everyone had at least one thing they could do right, but not him. Everyone had at least one place where they belonged, where they could find refuge, but not him.  
  
He was the lowest of the low as fa as society was concerned, and yet he had always saw himself of deserving of the happiness far above his station. He looked at people who struggled to improve their lives, who turned their suffeing into talent and happiness instead of blaming others in pettiness and then said _Yeah I deserve some of that._

『I… I hate myself. I convince people to depend on me, even though I can’t do anything but feed them lies. I’m full of myself even though I’m incompetent. 』

Smiling to deal with the pain? What a joke. It wasn’t strong to smile frivolously in a serious situation. He was making light of things to hide, he was scared so he joked and ran away, he never faced a single thing seriously, he never tried hard like Zenkichi did. If he did he was sure things would have turned out at least a little bit better.

『Unable to do a single thing, yet still I’m the super high school level complainer. I’ve always failed others, but when others fail me I feel like I have the right to bitch and moan! Who gave me the right, really? What’s the point of prolonging such a shameful life.』  
  
Unable to raise himself up he just dragged tothers down. He blamed them for his lack of ability. He tried to find fault in everyone else to protect his banal, paper thin, pride.

『I’m empty you know. I’ve got nothing else inside of me. Do you know what I did… To try to improve my situation? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do one little thing. With all the time, with all the freedom I have, I could have worked hard at something, I could have improved some part of myself and helped others with that part like Mikan-chan, but I didn’t do anything. I blamed everybody else around me for my inability to help myself, and this is the result! The result is the man who beat the shit out of you while laughing like manaic!』  
  
The world around him started to crack. From above the twinkling lights of stars came crashing down, and a stage light a large one with an iron bar still attached crashed into the earth to the right of Izuru. In every glass window fo the city scape that Kumagawa reflected in, the glass cracked over and over again.  
  
『I’m powerless, talentless, but it all comes down to me. My rotten personality that can’t make anything out of this. I want others to want me just like this, without changing anything about myself, without having done anything before, conceited doesn’t even begin to describe it, I was lazy and imposed on other people to give me a sense of self worth. I just led them along anyway, knowing there was nothing I could do from them, because I wanted someone to believe in me...I couldn’t be kind like Nagito-chan and push them away even though I knew what would happen to anybody I got involved with.』  
  
His lies were all gone, his bluffs stripped away, the hollow sense of pride he had as a loser was crumbling away. His reflection was breaking apart to pieces in the many windows around him.

『Even so, I… Even being the wretched existence I was. I wanted them to want me around. I wanted them to say ‘It wasn't your fault!” That’s all it was! That’s the only reason I kept throwing myself into danger like that! I wanted to believe it wasn’t my fault that I kept losing, that it was someone else, it was everybody else, not me but… It was all just self harm in the end. I was just putting on a show to cover up my embarrassment at how pathetic I was, at how much I wanted to hurt my pathetic self. I was dressing it up in a stage play and casting myself as the noble, suffering, anti-hero, but I don’t have a role like that. It was just an excuse to hurt myself. Other people were just an excuse to hurt myself.  I don’t have principles I believe in, I don’t have people I want to protect, it all changes from one moment to another based on what’s most convenient for me, what’s most comforting for me, what will make me look cool, I’m a liar down to the bone and that’s never changed! It can’t change, because in order for it to actually change I’d have to do a damn thing! 』  
  
A sick and disgusting child.  
No wonder the adults always looked away from him. He had just thrown a tantrum for attention.  
Looking at himself, reflecting in the various puddles around him rippling from the falling rain drops, looking honestly at himself, all he could think of was how much he wanted to vomit.  
Those adults were right for turning away his nauseous existence.  
If they had comforted him, if they had tolerated him, he would have gotten worse.

He wanted Junko, Izuru and Komaeda to see him as a fraud.  
He wanted them to see what a boring, self interesting, nobody he was.  
He wanted them to realize there was no grand secret to him, he had been an uninteresting parasite all along.  
It’s not like accepting all of those traits and admitting to them finally would make him want to improve. Even if he left this place, he would just fall back on the same excuses again, he would just continue to do nothing.

The easily bored girl looked at him again, and went.  
  
“Duh. Tell me something I don’t know. Who said you're allowed to insult yourself though, only I'm allowed to do that.”  
  
And slapped him hard across the cheek. Hard enough that his head turned.

『What was that for?』

 _Why was she still looking at him, he was boring._ He had ignored Junko for so long in this world, wanting her to realize what he was doing and ignore him. Suddenly her hands reached forward again, and her nails wrapped along either side of his head.  
  
She pulled his face in forcefully and buried it in her chest, embracing him. “You always let me rest on your lap and run your hands through my hair when I have a headache. No matter what you’re doing, you drop it and just sit with me even if the headache lasts for hours, and I’m being bitchy but in a boring way not a fun and clever way the entire time. I love spending that time with you, I should be bored enough to drill a hole in my skull but I’m not, I’m laughing.”

Kumagawa’s cheeks against her warm chest, feeling a single bit of warmth in the world of cold rain, in the world of ice, he continued to listen.

“I love your voice. My heart gets warmer from every single word, everything you say is so stupid it somehow never fails to make me smile. Your eyes look like dull, predictable clear water, the kind of eyes a dead fish might have at first, but they sharpen at the most unexpected times and whenever they do I know you’re about to do something amazing.”  
  
He ignored the rain, as suddenly there was a shower of words around him.  
  
“I love your hands. Your fingers are all rough and torn up, they’re crooked looking so they probably have been smashed a few times before, it was amazing watching you break them one by one without showing anything on your face at all. There’s scars on each of your knuckles, I can’t imagine what kind of thing happened there. When I hold your hands, you always hesitate for a moment as if you’re afraid to touch me, and then you cling tighter than anything. It’s like you expect to be hurt but then you always reach out anyway, stuuuuupiiiiiiid.”

『Stop it, I know what you’re doing..』  
  
“I love the faces you make when you sleep. You always look so terrified. I could just listen to you sleep for hours and be entertained, and I almost don’t want to wake you up but then I remember being awake is way more of a nightmare for you. I love all the scars you show me when your body is naked, and I love touching them and teasing the with my fingers, hey, hey you still haven’t told me about a bunch of them. I want to learn every way that you got hurt, and every person that hurt you before this. Every piece of misery you have I want to make it my own.”

『Junko. I know you. I know that you only say nice things to people when you want to hurt them.』His heart was screaming. All he wanted for Junko to do was reject him, to throw him away like she had threatened to do so many times. 『Why do you… Why do you always do the opposite of what I want?』  
  
“Why do you always do the opposite of what I want? It’s more interesting that way. You told me all the things I hated about you, so I told you all the things I love about you. If you start telling me all the things you love about yourself, I’ll be sure to cut your ego down to size and tell you exactly why I hate you.”

『None of that is real.』  
  
“You’re right I’m doing this stuff to hurt you. I’m getting this close to push you. When people are pushed, that’s the only way to make them do unpredictable things.”

『I’m lame. Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame.』

“You should stay out of balance, you should stay unforgiven, all of those flaws you carry Misogi the reason you didn’t throw them away is because they made you who you were.”  
  
He had fallen over and she had fallen on top of him. Slowly she was crawling over him. 『I’m the only one who knows about me! I’m the only one who knows how terrible I am!.』  
  
“You only know about you, you can’t see the Misogi that I see!” He red eyes focused on him. “Are you saying I’m wrong? Are you saying my interest is misplaced. You don’t get to decide that, I do. You don’t get to decide what I want, I do. I came to this decision all on my own. I’m the one who sunk my claws into you.”

『Enough of this evangelion crap! You don’t understand human psychology just because you watched some deep anime!』

  
“Even if you were to change though, I’m sure that new you would be just as interesting. I’m sure some part of me would change too, because we share the same world. We’re two halves of the same world. Any change in you is going to be reflected in me and vice versa--”

『Fine, you want to rant about evangelion so badly!』Kumagawa pounded his fist into the earth as hard as he could. This time however, instead of a brick wall that refused to break, the earth itself cracked and shattered to pieces. 『This is the lowest level, haha! Didn’t I tell you! We can always go lower!』

And so, Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi.  
Once again embraing each other.  
Plummeted lower, lower, and lower, fell into blackness.  
  
The square rows of stagelights in the sky above him, collapsed under their own weight and began to all on top of them. They cast spotlights that began holes in the foor of the world a moment later when they crashed down.

A boy was walking behind Medaka-chan, and Zenkichi as a part of their student council having finally gotten along with them.

A boy exchanged his suisou uniform for a reserve course uniform as he tried to infiltrate Hope's Peak, with Emukae, Shibushi, and Gagamaru at his side.

A boy was sleeping with a manga volume over his face and dreaming of Ajimu Najimi, while Saki-chan attempted to wake him up. He was slacking off from his duties as class president.

A boy was standing next to Ajimu Najimi, walking to his first day of middle school class. She pointed out interesting people in the crowd that she wanted him to make friends wth, a boy who destroyed everything, and an older brother who analyzed everything including his little sister obsessively.

A boy was walking alone, dragging a stuffed rabbit behind him. He was walking to go sleep in the pile of trash he called his home.

People were utterly replaceable to him. He was always replacing them. Always surrounded by others. He could not stand to lose them.  
He drifted from one situation to the next never changing. He always fought even though he claimed to want peace, he stepped on others with strength even though he complained about being weak, he was a contradiction like that. After all that life long journey, after changing places, and meeting different faces so many times he did not learn a damn thing.

  
The images floated by Kumagawa as he drifted down. He had a sensation like he was drowning, and tried to swim up to the surface, only to see hands reach out from every direction. They wrapped themselves around him and dragged him down further, touching every centimeter of his body. Exposing him. Drowning him. As he was dragged under the water he stopped fighting back.

  
As Kumagawa fell he saw a flash of white. Ajimu Najimi was in the water with him. She held out her hands as if to embrace him for a moment and he felt his body brush past against her, but in the end she did not reach out for him and she let him drown..

“Kumagawa.” A voice spoke in his head.  
He had no idea where his self was anymore but for some reason he could respond. 『I can’t. I’m terrible.』  
“It’s okay. You’re not alone in your terribleness. I’m your equal in being terrible.”

『Leave me alone. I don’t want to be this person anymore.』

"A world consisting on yourself is boring, that’s why we rely on others, even if it’s just for entertainment. If you can learn to rely on someone the world will grow and grow. Let's go back to the world of you and me." 

『I can’t! A big world’s too much for me! So many people are going to hurt me!』

“That’s why I want you to believe in me this time. That’s what our relationship is. Push and pull. When you’re strong I’ll be weak, and when I’m strong you’ll be weak. You’ll take everything from me and I’ll take everything from you.”

『My… my other half? But I’m just imposing upon you! I’m forcing you to be with me! I have to let you leave by your own free will! Don’t you understand what I did! I was worse than Yasuke-chan! I imprisoned you here, and wiped your memory fifty one times! I bragged and taunted Yasuke-chan again and again but in the exact same situation I did far worse.』  
  
“...”  
  
『I can’t undo what happened in those games.』

“I know.”  
  
『I’m not interesting at all Junko. I’m a coward. I’m such a wimp. So petty over the slightest offense. So weak. All to protect the world’s most fragile ego. All to protect my pride over nothing..』

“I know all the things you are. This is you, isn’t it?”

They sunk deeper and deeper into the water and even though she knew he was dragging him down she refused to let go of him.   
Suddenly, Kumagawa Misogi washed up on a beach. Had he returned? Had he returned to that island?  
  
When he climbed out of the sand, he saw that he was nothing more than a child. His hair was white again, he was wearing a white long sleeved uniform, but he had no rabbit to carry around. Even though he had been running away from her for a moment ago, when he saw nothing but a sand beach around him he got so scared he began to look for her.  
  
He searched everywhere for Junko but she was nowhere to be found. He drew a circled in te sand, and gave up, forgetting that he was ever an adult. An adult who acted like a child should just regress to the body of a child, this was more fitting for him.  
  
In his tiny circle he tried to play. He tried to make a sand castle, only for it to collapse on him all on its own.  
  
“Hey. You suck at that.”  
  
A teenage girl stepped over the circle he had drawn around himself quite rudely, and then stepped on what little remained of his sand castle.  
  
“Can you see me? I don’t want you to look away from me again. I don’t want you to ignore me.”

『Stop it you’re just a murderer.』  
  
A spear rose up from the sand.  
  
Softly like a whisper. "I love you." 

『You’re only going this far because it benefits you.』  
  
Another spear stabbed forward.

 "I love you."

『You’re just treating me like a possession.』  
  
Another spear stabbed the girl who smiled like a wolf.

 "I love you." 

『You’re just indulging in your own twisted value.』  
  
Then another spear stabbed her, her body twisted back and forth like a rag doll.

 "I l...lo..."

『You build yourself up like you were born to spread despair, but that’s all lies! You’re just a shallow narcissist! It’s not about despair, just your own reckless egoism. 』  
  
Another spear, until he had stabbed as many spears of Gugnir that had been stabbed into Mukuro, plus one lance of loginus.

 "I love you." 

『You’re just an ugly empty girl. We should be together because we’re both equally terrible, what kind of joke is that?』  
  
The spears retreated and Junko’s body sagged onto the ground. She was still looking like her normal self, from that bloody mess a single hand moved forward, like a snake slithering through the sand. “Please… hold my hand.”

『Junko… are you there…?』

Then suddenly there was nothing of Enoshima Junko. There was no corpse left behind, there had never been any spears, nor a disembodied voice. There was just one cloud of pitch black darkness. He was willing to say anything to get her away from him, but the moment she began to cry he wanted to take it all back.   
  
She was probably just throwing a tantrum at being rejected. Only Junko would be so petty as to throw a tantrum to reject her entire ego form, and refuse to deploy her AT field anymore and deny all humanity to turn into nothing more than pitch black despair. 

『Trying to do the thing from end of evangelion was a stupid idea. The borders between people’s egos, their ego defense mechanisms is too strong, isn’t that what you’d always say? Ugh now I’m quoting eva.』He sighed, looking at the cloud around him. Junko probably preferred being a pitch black cloud, an unfathomable darkness, something that looked like despair itself rather than being a human being. 『You’re forgetting what you looked like. You went too deep into my ego. You always acted like you have such a strong sense of self, an ego that stomped over others and yet you’re trembling like this. You always acted like you wanted to disappear but you look... sad...』  
  
He reached forward into the cloud, and pulled out Enoshima Junko’s hand, covered in red nails. He pulled her out of it, and she was standing before him, a child of not even four years old with two small red pig tails. She had landed on what was left of his pitiful attempt at a sand castle, completely destroying it.

『You know. I don’t have a mother, or a father. To me the closest thing was Ajimu-san, but she abused me didn’t she? She took me in as an older sister, so she should have taken care of me, but in the end it was always about her, her needs, her boredom, and then she made me feel like it was my job to save her life. I was just a middle schooler.』

Kumagawa was now holding her hand, looking a lot taller. The sides of his head were shaved and he wore the high collared uniform of ark middle school with a red presidents sash around one his arms.  
  
Junko was wearing a greed middle school uniform. She had not quite grown up yet, so her red hair was still in tiny pigtails. The top button of her uniform was unbuttoned and her skirt had gotten shorter. She was not yet wearing fake nails though, so she held his hand normally.

“Hey, Misogi. I only went to that school to destroy it. My days there weren't fun at all. One day passed predictably to the next, while everybody around me told me every day should be so full of peace, so full of boring.”

『She abused me just like you abused Mukuro-chan, but you know what really scared me? When she started to treat me kindly. When I started to feel positive emotions towards her. I thought it was all fake, that my heart was lying. I don’t think it was all just to save her when I ripped her face off, part of it was I couldn’t understand why I loved this person so much. This person that hurt me and helped me in equal amounts.』

“But, I pretended to be a student for so long I ended up liking my classmates. There's no point in killing someone you don't care about right?”  
  
Kumagawa looked to the side and saw that he was in the uniform of suisou middle school again, the uniform he wore when he first met her. His hair had grown a lot longer on both of the sides, and one side of his hair was uneven. His hair had grown to be shaggy, uncomed and unkempt, though his uniform was a neat and clean pitch black with a yellow high collar.  
  
Ryoko Otonashi and forgotten she was holding his hand for a moment. He had to go after her and snatch it again, and drag her back to where she was standing before she wandered away again. She had long red hair that fell down at her sides. Her hair was parted in a jagged part that obscured one of her eyes. She was wearing a carefree expression of a girl that did not even think about hope and despair. She was the kind of idiotic big boobed girl you would run into on the first day of school.  
  
"Isn't it the same for you? Didn't you like that school...?"

『After transferring to so many schools, I finally found you and that school. If I could have stayed at that school a little longer, it would have made all the suffering in my life worth it.』  
  
"That's a stupid thing to say."

『Haha, I know, but good luck, talent, success, none of that matters to me really. But there was someone who loved this person without asking anything in return.』  
  
"Now that's just the delusions of a romanticist, a romantic lie." 

『It's true you demand everything from me.』  
  
"Yeah, so? What do you want back? If you're going to sell your soul to the devil you should get something out of it." 

『You're not the devil Junko. You're just a girl, and I'm just a stupid boy, but if you want to be a witch then I'll be the devil with you. I... I want to go back, I don't want to go back...』  
  
I want to go back.  
I don't want to go back.  
To those school.  
To those fragile days.  
To those days that I know will come to an end once again.   
  
The two of them were standing on the beach of Jabberwock island again, a ruined sand castle in between them. Her heels were stepping on it. The hand Kumagawa was clutching was only Junko's severed hand not attached from her body. 

『Say, Junko. I don’t want to return to the real world with you. Even if we were born into entirely different circumstances, and met again in the next life, we’d still probably turn out exactly the same. We do nothing on our own to change ourselves.』  
  
“Misogi.”

『I’d just suffer once more. I don’t want to keep mistaking, getting hurt for love. I’ve had enough.』

He finally let go of her hand.  
The severed hand dropped uselessly into the sand, and the water of the beach watched away.   
However, she still reached after his with her sole remaining hand.   
  
He was wearing a reserve course uniform with a black and white tie. His hair had gotten a bit longer, and he was as tall as he was ever going to get one centimeter shorter than her. He no longer wore the president’s sash around his arm, as he had graduated from Suisou, and from Medaka’s student council. He only wore that black and white, his connection to that black and white girl.  
  
Enoshima Junko had blonde hair, red at the roots if you looked closely. Her hair was tied up in pig tails with little black and white bears on each pony, black hope and white despair. Her skirt was red and plaid and she wore it short enough that her plump thighs were still visible. The hand that she reached out to him with had red pointed nails at the end.

『Even so. If you want to see me again no matter what.』

Her hands were still reaching for him, so he reached back for her in return. Just as their hands were about to touch -

『If your desire is really that strong. If you’re true to that desire then. Be sure to make me smile!』  
  
He turned and smiled at her.  
His smile was like pure light.  
Guided by that simple desire.  
He didn't want to go back, but he did.  
To the school where Kumagawa MIsogi could finally have the "normal school life" that he had always wanted.  
Even knowing that it would probably end soon, again. Something else would come to drag him away.  
He wanted to reach that ending with a smile at least.   
  
So, holding his hand.  
So, holding her hand.  
The two of them returned to finish the sand castle together.   
Somewhere behind them, a young girl with red hair and twin pigtials, and a young boy with white hair and dead looking eyes were working on the same sand castle.  
When they were finished, Junko stepped on it.  
She held out her hand again.  
Kumagawaa took it.  
So, holding onto her.  
So, holding onto him.   
They walked back into the sea again and swam back to the surface. J  
  
Izuru had finished prying Komaeda off of the wall with his bare hands. Komaeda whispered soft apologies for troubling him, and the marks it created on his hand.   
  
Kumagawa was resting on Junko's lap, his body sprawled out around her. When he heard the change of wind, and the sound of rustling cloth that always heralded Ajimu's appearance, he twisted his body around just a bit to look for her, and instinctively twisted his body around Junko, holding her with his arms protectively.   
  
“Are you sure about this, Junko-chan? I find it difficult to comprehend your desire to have Kumagawa-kun back to the point of pursuing him so recklessly. Isn’t he the one that’s supposed to pursue you. If there’s some rationale behind it I’d like to know.” Ajimu Najimi said, standing on the sole iron beam that was left standing.   
  
“There is none. There is no reason at all. I simply follow my desires. Even a non-human like you should find that hard to comprehend. At the end of the day, I always get what I want.” Junko said, as she petted the Kumagawa Misogi that had laid his head in her lap. He ran her long fingernails through his hair separating it carefully.  
  
“Upupupu. Of course after all of this,  he wants to go on dreaming like an idiot it’s not like I can mind control him. Apparently that’s not allowed anymore, ugh. I guess I can go back to destroying the world if I get too bored again.”

『Like I’d let you. You didn’t have any fun destroying the world last time, Junko.』  
  
“That’s your only problem with my last statement?”

『Yeah, I mean why do something that you won’t be able to smile at in the end.』  
  
“Oh that’s right. Death games are no fun anymore. It gets dull after fifty two times. I’m a girl who gets bored easily, I’d even get bored of a world of nothing but despair.”

『Hmmm, maybe we should just destroy the world and recreate it again.』  
  
“You shouldn’t say that like it’s so easy.”

『You’re the last person on earth that gets to complain about making things out to be easier than they are! The last person! Everything’s easy for you!』

“Yeah, the only thing that’s difficult is you.”

『You don’t get to complain about being difficult either. Get down on your knees and apologize to Mukuro-chan, and keep apologizing for the next seventeen years. Ultimate Dogeza!』  
  
“Nah, don’t feel like it.”

『I’m sorry Mukuro-chan, I’ve failed you!』Kumagawa rested his head against her chest again. Junko did nothing to resist it, she wrapped an arm around his shoulder. 『There has to be something interesting in that real world. I’ll keep looking as long as you do. If you were to die tomorrow, I’d be fine with tomorrow being the last day of my life. If you were to live through today, I will also choose to live through today.』  
  
“If you were to die the day after tomorrow. Then I’ll wait just long enough to tell somebody about what a pathetic life you’ve lived, and share a laugh over it.”

『Ah, I’m glad. Then my life will have amounted to something.』

Ajimu Najimi clicked her red heels together.

The world around them melted. It dissolved entirely.  
A world was destroyed. A world would be reborn again soon. It turned out despite all the drama destroying a world was a rather easy thing to do, or maybe it was just that way for blonde teenage girls.   
Enoshima Junko.  
Kumagawa MIsogi.  
HInata Izuru.  
Komaeda Nagito.  
Their hearts melted as well.  
  
My eyes peeled open. There were tears in the corner of my eyes and quickly I had forgotten what I was crying about. There was a silhouette watching over me as I regained consciousness. His hair was long and fell over obscuring most of his body except for his eyes that glowed underneath. A very handsome horror movie monster that could crawl out of my tv. If he ever did crawl out of the tv of unworthy trash like myself I would ask him on a date.   
  
"Ahhh... Kamukura Izuru...?"   
  
I muttered through trembling lips.   
  
Rather rude of him, not to kiss me awake after all of that fuss.   
Already figuring most of the situation out, I raise my... er Junko's left hand connected unfortunately to my own unworthy arm with rushed and soloppy bandage works.   
  
"No, you're uh... Hinata Hajime-kun, right?"   
  
He takes my hand rather easily.  
Too easily. Jeez, what a shameless and presumptuous guy as always.   
  
"I suppose I should thank you for waking me up? I knew you'd make it to the lowest stratum, I believed in you-"  Immedaitely, I remembered what was more important than me. "How are the others?"  
  
"You're the last one out, well second to last. There's someone even more sluggish than you."   
  
"Those two are helpless on their own. We should make sure they don't get up to any more trouble."   
  
In the hallway, Fuyuhiko had been waiting. Most likely he did not rush to Hinata's side to wait by the hospital bed because he did not want to give too strong of an impression that he cared. One of his eyes was scarred, probably from the rushed surgery Izuru had to give to remove it.   
  
"You were in there long enough." He said arms crossed. "What kinda dream were you having without me?"   
  
"Sorry, sorry to keep youw aiting." I close my eyes and smile innocently like a cat. There's not a drop of innocence in my body so I doubt such a mask will work, or even come off looking cute as intended. Before he could reply, I threw my arms around him leaning my head against his shoulder.   
  
A completely unnecessary embrace.  
I can't read the room as usual.  
  
"The hell're you doing?" Fuyuhiko says, trying to save face.  
  
For once I don't mind being this socially clumsy. "It wasn't a bad dream, at least."   
  
"Yeah... Yeah... You know I heard you get taller when you sleep, so why am I this size still and why are you still such an awkward giant? Seriously, some guys have all the luck."    
  
He followed the rest of us to watch in the door way of the final patient. The most difficult one. In the race for waking up he was definitely last place.   
  
Kumagawa Misogi woke up. His head rolled to the side, and he saw two sisters on either side of his bed. The family he had found after wandering for so long. He struggled with the headset around his head for a moment, and then looked back to Mukuro and Junko.  
  
Despair Sisters.  
He stumbled out of his bed towards them. Even emaciated and broken as his body was he was still able to move it the same as always.  
He threw his arms around one of them.  
  
“Hey, how come you always run to hug Mukuro first!” Enoshima Junko whined.

『Because she’s the better sister!』

Kumagawa Misogi smiled.  
  
Komaeda Nagito sitting in the doorway of the room, could not help but smile either as Hinata Izuru leaned over his shoulder. After all those long days of observing, he was finally able to observe such a warm sight in the world of ice.   
  
I decided whatever happened next, could continue on without this annoying, overly introspective, and emo narration so let's just leave the story at that for now.   
  
  
**Book 1 End.**


	10. Because I Love Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's like no adults in Medaka Box so I had to borrow from other NisioIsin works. Deishuu Kaiki is a character in Monogatari. Also, in this version Tsurubami Fukurou is instead Matsuda Fukurou, as Yasuke Matsuda is taking over Tsurubami Kanome from Medaka Box. More "adults" to show up later. Consider this to be taking place in a mix between the dangan ronpa settings and the general NISIO verse (Ie, Monogatari, Zaregoto, Kyoko Okitegami) with Medaka Box added in. I combined some characters together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Oakyvii on Tumblr  
> Matsuda's interactions with Tsurubami Fukurou are based off of Utsurigi Gaisuke.

 

****

 

 _Just take a step forward  in the world_ _  
_ _whose surface is platinum in my eyes._ _  
_ _Let’s dance together To the beat in my chest_ _  
_ _That will never cease_ _  
_ _  
_ _The moon that I found behind you on that day_ _  
_ _Is still flashing and shimmering_ _  
_ _Like a disco ball in the night sky tday_ _  
_ _  
_ _Fed up with things that change,_ _  
_ _And the things that stay the same_ _  
_ _For the first time I learned_ _  
_ _Of this eternity  Which I’ll pledge to you._ _  
_ _  
_ _Even though I’m platinum happy._ _  
_ _I get platinum sad_ _  
_ _And cry platinum tears_ _  
_ _How? Why?_ _  
_ _Am I so discontent? Dischotheque?_ _  
_ _  
_ _When I look back_ _  
_ _Our footprints are side by side_ _  
_ _Hey, I’m playing around with you._ _  
_ _I want to sleep, but I won’t_ _  
_ _Let’s keep dancing around a little bit longer_ _  
_ _  
_ _I don’t mind if tomorrow never comes._ _  
_ _So I hope that a day like today will last on and on._ _  
_ _Gently drifting off in my dreams_ _  
_ _In the trivial, Yet irreplaceable history that I have_ _  
_ _Even a little white lie will turn into the real thing by your side.  
  
("Platinum Disco") _

**Book 2 - Fake Love Story / Nisekoimonogatari**   **  
****Yasuke Hedgehog / Unknown Shiranui Arc**

 

* * *

 

 

Neuroscience Institute Interview Record.  
Name: Matsuda Yasuke.  
I lay down on a bed that I used to tie an annoying forgetful girl to, a manga volume covering my face as I try to sleep.  
There’s a butterfly whose wings are pinned to the wall inside a glass case.  
Another man is speaking, in a chair directly across from him his back turned around.

  
“You actually hate Enoshima Junko, don't you?”  
  
Shut up.  
  
“Right from the start, right from when you were children, at the origin of it all - her very existence is for you, a cause of hatred, and I think she is simply an object for you to center your hate around. Hatred, yes, hatred. You can’t deny it, can you? If only Enoshima Junko never existed, you must have thought. I can’t say happiness, but if she never had existed then you would not have had to watch your whole life play out in front of you like a child play acting on a stage. Childhood, teenage years, adulthood, you would have been allowed to particpate in a life that was not pre-scripted.”  
  
Shut up.  
  
“Have you thought about it? With that brain of yours that can be called ‘Ultimate Neurologist’. You who were sought out by Hope’s Peak to join their research wing, a child whose intellect helped create mankind’s ultimate hope, have you once thought about it?”  
  
Shut up.

 

“Even if you were to think about it for a single second, is all the time I need to ask such a narrow question. You have not allowed yourself to think about it, to truly grasp it, rather you just accepted it naturally right away. Is that not fear, or is it protectiveness towards her? You must know by now, your entire life is based on fleeing from Enoshima Junko. From the moment you’ve encountered her, you ran away with everything you had. You might be able to pride yourself as the Ultimate Neurologist, someone who reached that talent all on his own, and you might have once possessed an individualism that kept the borders between you and others complete but can you say that anymore? Does a hedgehog like you even possess an AT Field when it comes to her?”  
  
Shut up.  
  
“For example, even I - Matsuda Fukurou, who can only play the role of being human am still not as distanced from humanity as her. I would never be shameless enough to call myself Ultimate Despair. Compared to her, I’m a hundred times more normal. An egocentric and eccentric like me becomes so plain it’s enough to make me cry. For some reason, you know of Komaeda Nagito. Even that bundle of evil and misfortune, with a twisted worship of hope compared to Enoshima Junko, is still only the Ultimate Good Luck in the end. Even his oddity of an existence was pulverized by her, he was forced to his knees and became a worship of her. Non, non, even before that. When you were witnessing the downfall of this school happen did you ever wonder, how a single seventeen year old girl was able to orchestrate it all. How everyone moved perfectly in sync to the musical score she created? Even a master conductor who had worked his entire life could not bring together so easily, in such perfection harmony, beacuse even to a composer humans remain humans and will miss one or two notes without meaning to, but not before ENoshima Junko they’re not. She lead this school to a perfect harmony in chaos, to it’s destruction, and it’s impossible anybody besides her could have done it. You were in the epicenter of it all, did you not once find yourself fasicnated by the sheer amazingness of that task?”  
  
Shut up.  
  
“Her accomplices they all knew didn’t they? The sixteen Ultimate Despairs, let’s ignore their individual backstories. Yes, Enoshima Junko had to set them all on long and winding roads before they could be broken to the point of thinking even a fraction like her, she needed to fracture them. However, even though they all had their own incredible talents, they all knew without question that they could never overcome ultimate despair. That extreme egoist she could never acknowledge someone as superior to her. She’s undefeatable in a sense, she’s only defeated when she herself allows it, when she desires it. If defeating her was all it would take, then it would be simple. I don’t know what those sixteen were thinking and I don’t really care, but I can reason what her existence must be to them. Something that can’t be surpassed. I as well, when she swept in and began to destroy the precious Kamukura project I had been working on, I had no desire at all to stop her. Forget that, I didn’t want to even entertain the idea. My mind runs away at the idea that I could have ever stopped her. They all sensed it too, that’s why they gave into her. They all bowed down to her and let her walk over them. Because if they had tried to be above her, they would have entered an abnormal dimmension.”  
  
Shut up.  
  
“That’s why - oh you were childhood friends with her but have you ever spent time with her sister, Ikusaba Mukuro? I’ve never encountered her, but from what I can tell she’s an ordinary girl. Do you get what that means? Those two sisters have the same root, similar genes, they’re even close enough to be twins but still, there’a sn oppressive difference between Enoshima Junko and Ikusaba Mukuro. What exactly caused that? It wasn’t how they were born, it wasn’t fate inscribed into their DNA, because they are similiar enough, it couldn’t even be called nurture either because they were raised in the exact same environment. Enoshima Junko even acknowledges Ikusaba Mukuro as her one and only family. In other words, ENoshima Junko is simply special. She’s an abnormal among abnormals. She stands above others sos much it seems like it’s just a joke, yet she’s so terrible in her existence that it can’t be a joke. Even you yourself have the personality of a loner, you’re twisted and abnormally obsessive and push others away, and whose fault is that? Oh, it’s mine for being such a shitty father I suppose, haha. Yet, you yourself are not stranger, are not more singular, not more alone than Enoshima Junko. Compared to her, you’re still, and still, and still, and still, and still within the bounds of a normal person. You’re so normal that it’s tedious, unbelievably tedious.”

Shut up.  
  
“For another example let’s imagine another girl that you could describe as standing on top of all other’s. The girl whose destined to be mankind’s strongest. Kurokami Medaka that foster daughter of mine, she’s always towered over others, she’s overly serious, oppressive, she forces everyone to work to her level. She was described as a main character like entity that can never lose. However, Enoshima Junko is the opposite of that. She’s the color of gold like the sun, even if her personality is pitch black, even if she’s a celestial body that no heat can reach, she’s at the same time, cheerful, bright, someone who smiles at everything as if accepting everything. Unlike the fearsome Kurokami Medaka, Enoshima Junko embraced every part of you didn’t she? Kurokami Medaka rejects too much to be called an existence like Enoshima Junko. She accepts everything, a windsock with a hole in it, a sieve, she has a personality anybody can get along with, that anybody can call real. Yet still, her existence is one that calls out for us to stop moving. You’ve stopped haven’t you? In the end, you’ve never taken a single step. Since you were two years old, seventeen years ago, you learned nothing for yourself, you attained nothing for yourself, you found out nothing for yourself, you could not abandon anything, seventeen years the time you’ve known her. You’re exactly the same as what you wanted you to be when she first met you. You’re still just her childhood friend she wished you to become. The moment you met her, you ceased to be the individual existence called Matsuda Yasuke and were instead cast in her play. Everything you’ve done since then has been for her, even when you thought you were doing it for yourself.”  
  
Shut up.  
  
“That’s why, from the beginning you’ve hated her. As much as your love, your protect belongs to Enoshima Junko, so does your resentment, so does your murderous will, and most of all your destruction. Logially, because she changed your life. No, that’s wrong - her existence definitively did not change your life. She did not allow you to change. She did not allow you to be anything other than what was needed of you. I’m not calling you stupid, son, I don’t think you never realized this. You are not lacking in self awareness, rather you’re so self aware you’ve probably known this from the start. You’re not immoral either, but rather you’re both. You’re aware but not aware, you’re immoral but not immoral, you’re a paradox flipping between two extremes. Simply put, you’re both yan and dere. Stop glaring at me like that, hahaha. I hate to be stared at with my own eyes, it’s unnerving. You knew the oppressive truth, and that is also the reason why you ran from the truth. You have the freedom to act, I’ll respect that, those were your own decisions you made when Enoshima Junko coerced you into wiping her memories. However, even in that attempt you made to escape, you never really escaped her, and there was no change that happened in you, and as a result even after dying and coming back from the dead you’re the same now aren’t you? You must have wondered, no you must have known, if Enoshima Junko never existed, if Enoshima Junko never existed, if that woman who dances on the edge of death like the edge of a building before the skyline never existed then who exactly would you be?”

Shut up.

“You must have known from the moment you encountered her, you must have seen yourself staring at the edge of a building looking at the pavement below and the red stains of others that had stood where you stood. Instead of fear, unfortanately you were mesmerized by her, and not only that but you also mesmerized her. She saw you as special, when the world is nothing more than faceless blue automatons, background colors that are not even colored in by the animators to her. Horrible and marvelous, such an unlikely probability catching her eye is it must be called Ultimate Bad luck. Your luck was worse than Komaeda’s. If I had been destroyed in a plane crash, if you had been kidnapped and brutalized, you still would have led a much more fortunate life than you do now. What she did to the Utlimate Despairs she had no care for, was paltry and impersonal compared to what happened to you. You’re the one whose suffered her the most. There’s no despair greater than mutual feelings, and mutual love. Hey, hey, your souls are made of the same stuff,  you feel exactly the same for one another Heathcliff, and because of that between the two of you how many victims have you created? How many fell by your feet while you walked side by side with her?”

  
Shut up with the literary allusions already.  
  
“I’m just teasing you. You’ve lived quite a dramatic life haven’t you? How many childhood friends actually become lovers outside of anime? Let me compare again, remember Kamukura Izuru, who you and I helped create. We made a genius in a lab, one lacking in experience. We even gave him the same eyes as her. They could view the sky in the exact same way, and he became intimate with her. The moment she appeared before him, because she sought him out, he was mesmerized and seduced. Before that we purposefully kept him isolated in a flask, geniuses are always alone and isolated, but that doesn’t mean every genius loves that. Storge, Philautia Agape, Pramga, Ludus, Philia, Eros… not that it matters what it’s called, distinction of love doesn’t matter for her. Anyway, she swept him off his feet with some kind of love and broke the glass test tube we so carefully hid him in. What Frankenstein desired was a bride tailor made for him, Frankenstein’s bride right? Except she was not sewn together like he was, she was just born all on her own she was already like that.”  
  
Shut up. You threw more literary allusions just to spite me didn’t you?

“Regardless, Kamukura Izuru’s attraction to Enoshima Junko was inevitable, enough to be called fated. You understand, don’t you? They were the only two who could be called alike in any way, they were both peerless except to one another. So, here’s a question. Do you think Enoshima Junko even considered his feelings, do you think they even reached her?”

  
Shut up.  
  
“The answer is no. Enoshima Junko did not regard Kamukura Izuru as anything at all. If what she sought was an equal, he would be the closest thing. However, to Enoshima Junko most circumstances are in reverse, like a tarot card flipped over. The hanged man is hanging in the proper direction when you’re viewing the world through her eyes. Kamukura Izuru, probably predicted that from the start, so he didn’t even approach her. Of course, he claimed to simply be using her the same way she was using him. He didn’t play act out a relationship, like a foolish, cute child’s play that you and her performed together, pretending you weren’t already standing at the edge of a building with her, at the edge of your own death, or throwing yourself off. Hmph, by the way you’re the same age as Kamukura Izuru aren’t you? And then one year older than Enoshima  Junko. Nintenteen? Haha, forgetting the age of my own son, I’m trash aren’t I?”  
  
If you know you’re trash stop filling the air with your smelly breath. Jeez. Shut up already.  
  
“You already know don’t you, the difference between solitude and isolation. What you think of your own relationship is generally correct, you know her better than most. Matsuda Fukurou will say correct! Your father has finally praised you just once in your life! I’m looking at you with pride. That’s what I think, because of her you’ve walked a road filled with copious amounts of misery and distress, and you’ve realized this as well, you’ve finally become aware of the true nature of your past, but the road-less desert stretching out before you is overflowing with even more despair. I’m looking out for you now, I’m trying to warn you.”  
  
Shut up. I preferred it when you didn’t praise me. Praise from you whose something else wearing human skin, makes my skin crawl.  
  
“Though I’m puzzled why you came to talk with me of all people? Why you thought that I would know the future any better than you? Matsuda Fukurou, what exactly can I warn you of? Our shared name means rice field of pine. I’m the owl that flies above it, you’re the night help that guards it. Our nature is too opposite to understand, or do anything towards one another. From the start you must have known that, that we were too far apart, that there were never any feelings that were going to be shared between us. It’d be troublesome if you were to rely on me to escape the existence of Enoshima Junko. It’s not like I’m trying to avoid responsibility as an adult. If I thought it were actually possible, I would help you in a moment. Because I created you, I raised you out of obligation, and would have continued to have done so until you were eighteen if you had come with me when I left your mother behind. You were the one who chose to stay behind with your mother. It might seem cruel of me to have raised Kurokami Medaka instead after that point, but I was just doing the same thing, I was play acting the role of father like I did for her. If you wanted I would have raised you right alongside her with no trouble at all, I can play multiple parts at once. There’s nothing I can do but play act though, and I can’t act a part that’s unscripted. I never hit you, or lied to you, it’s just simple neglect, I never felt anything genuine for you like a father should feel for his son. When you asked me to never treat you like a son again I even abided by your request. When we encountered each other at Hope’s Peak years later, we cooperated on the same team without anybody realizing the fraught past and connection between us, we got along much better than when we were pretending we didn’t know each other didn’t we? Perhaps you were just never meant to have a father, the same way you never really had a mother. So, I’m not trying to escape responsibility when I said this, because truly I’d do anything you asked of me, if only out of obligation with no real feelings behind it. However, I cannot do what I do not know how to do. I’ve never crossed the boundary line of death. I never threw myself off like you have with Enoshima Junko. That’s why neither I, nor your troublesome brother Kamukura Izuru are able to provide you with words of assistance in dealing with her. All I can give you are platitudes. _It’s too late. That’s too bad. It can’t be helped. How pitiable._ ”

Shut up.

“You already threw yourself off with her a long time ago. You splashed against the concrete and became another red stain. In other words you’ve hit a dead end when it came to your eistence. Whether you’ve realized it yourself I can’t say, I’m not you. However, the fact that you threw herself before her may have worked out for the best. It may be cruel of me to say as your father, but I support Enoshima Junko’s side. If she finds happiness even in despair, in causingyour despair, than that’s fine for me. But, you feel the same way too don’t you? You, me, Kamukura Izuru, her sister Ikusaba Mukuro, the Ultimate despairs, we never cared about anything as long as Enoshima Junko was fine with it. Everything else -yourself included, doesn’t matter.”  
  
Shut up.

“I’m not admonishing you. That’s just how compelling Enoshima Junko’s existence is, she’s a model but she goes beyond seduction and attraction, beautiful words like revere and worship fit her perfectly. They fit so perfectly that they can’t be removed, they’re immutable aspects of her being. She’s an idol, to a religious extent. You and I are not alone in our inferiority to Enoshima Junko. We’re all boring objects to her. We’re all dolls without hearts. It doesn’t matter whether we’re broken or unbroken before her. That’s why if for her happiness, blood were to be shed, people were to fall down, it’s so trivial that it’s nothing. Greater Good, the status quo, peace, security, hope, that’s not a legitimate phrase in front of her. You feel the same, you must feel the same.”  
  
Shut up.

“Despair calls to us. That despair calls to us. Destroy what cannot be destroyed. Make hell into heaven. Make anarchy into another form of order. Don’t hold back. None can obstruct you once you believe in her. Rampage all you want until the world becomes beatiful, until you’ve despaired the despair named despair. It’s not world domination, because the world is simply a toy chest to Enoshima Junko. Of course that goes for us too, within the chest, to herI ended up being a toy that was just slightly useful - I definitely don’t know how you are to her - but because I don’t know I ask: So what sort of you were you to her in the end?”

  
Shut up.

  
“We have to be her toys. It’s not something to be miserable about. Nietzsche says animals grazing peacefully have acquired true freedom, they’re not chained down by that thing called self awareness. Come on, brag about how close you are to her, you’re the closest one by far. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that what you wanted to be a special existence to her? Being used and being thrown away is a point of honor, being stomped on until you were nothing more than pulp and a puddle of blood smeared across the floor is a point of honor. Why do you look so ashamed right now?”  
  
Shut up.

“The Ultimate Despairs did not even realizing they were plotting to destroy the world, because they were consumed by one singular wish. They wanted to be useful to Enoshima Junko. Rewriting the story of the world, making the world more beautiful, they had no thoughts on that whatsoever. I doubt if they even knew the emotion coursing through the veins had a name. They did not think. _I’m in despair._ All they thought was. _I’m feeling right now what Enoshima Junko feels._ Despair is not despair, despair is simply the emotion that belongs wholly to Enoshima Junko. They weren’t satisfied when they dragged something down, they felt no guilt over what got splattered on the pavement, causing the worst, most tear jerking tragedy did not move their hearts. Their reason was without jest and joke, blessings to her, happines to her, amusement to her, they just wanted to make her laugh. They did not mind being the punch line to accomplsih that goal. Their lives became a joke, they destroyed,d estroyed, destroyed, and destroyed what they had already destroyed, trampled what they had already trampled. They would do anything for her. You’d do anything for her. You’d let the world die, for her. You too, for her, you would die isn’t that right? If you thought she truly cared for you if you thought she truly wished it you could accept that easily.”

  
Shut up.

“However, this will make Enoshima Junko happy is nothing but our own projection upon her. I truly don’t know if beyond hypothesis, if Enoshima Junko could achieve happiness in the first place. In fact, Enoshima Junko herself might do anything for you too not even thinking of her own happiness. She would listen to any feelings you had. She would remember you when everything else is forgotten. If from the bottom of your heart you seriously desired to kill her, she would allow herself to die by your hands. Just as you became bound to her, she too became bound to you. Mutual love, then we can think about this too, Enoshima Junko also has stopped, she has not become anything other than your childhood friend you’ve known since you were two years old. She has not grown up.”

I mean that’s true she has a brain of a two year old, but shut up.

“I can only theorize based on observation of course. Observations by third party people are just meddlesome delusions. I can’t understand you outside of my own delusion no matter what. JUst as you cannot attain happiness on your own no matter what without her, does tht mean that Enoshima Junko will never taste true happiness? Just as Enoshima Junko, that lonely existence is a reason for you to have stopped, can the same be said for her? That she would be content living in a world with just you. Then, the reason you’ve both stopped, is because of a paradox you cannot compute, an error in the system, a logical breakdownt hat halts all further progress until you figure it out. Neither of you can overcome yourselves, for as long as she’s still with you, for as long you are with her you exist.”

Shut.  
Shut.  
I.  
I. told you.  
I said shut up.

  
“Yet, here’s why she’s truly a terrible person. You’re never allowed to disappear. Let’s say I were to kill you. This isn’t just a hypothetical that lacks realisms, after all I have no real feelings of a parent for you. You’ve also died once before this, even if you’re alive at this moment. If I were to delete you, that would be the same as deleting Enoshima Junko. It would be destroying Enoshima Junko’s world. A temporary pause, would become an eternal pause, a frozen world. Nothing changes, in fact things would get worse for her. How terrifying, how disgusting. That’s why she tried so hard to destroy you, because she knew she herself would be equally destroyed, it was like tearing half of herself away. You’re done for, Enoshima Junko is done for. As long as you’re around each other, both of you exist in that state. You, and you two, are really pitiful. That’s why I need to know more than anything else”  
  
Fukuro said.  
  
“Don’t you actually hate Enoshima Junko.”  
  
“Of fucking course I do.”  
  
“You still don’t get what I’m asking do you? Not that you came to hate her, right from the start, from the very beginning, before you realized you lived your whole life in a script written by Enoshima Junko didn’t you hate her all the way back then? Right from the very beginning? You knew didn’t you? What did you know? You knew what she was all along- ”  
  
I.  
I. I.  
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

『A petty brat.』

Kumagawa MIsogi’s voice interrupted. Just like a shadow, he stuck in through a crack in the door. He was able to lie still, silent, and unnoticed listening to us the entiretime because Kumagawa Misogi is notthing more than a shadow cast.

『Junko is nothing more than a petty brat. Don’t listen to yourself, Yasuke-chan. You’re  making Junko into something he’s not, in order to make your feelings into something they’re not. You’re getting over-complicated to obfuscate your own truth and make you accept this truth that’s been imposed upon you instead.』

  
“Kumagawa Misogi, why did I ignore him this entire time? Well, it’s because Kumagawa Misogi is the very existence of a lie itself. Enoshima Junko is such a capable liar, she can lie to herself as well, and she’s lied so well she believes Kumagwa Misogi to be interesting. But he has nothing to do with this scenario. He was a child I threw out long ago, I never even factored him into my plans.”  
  
I don’t say anything to defend Kumagawa Misogi, who was standing right there. Even if he suddenly spoke up to defend me, I keep my mouth shut up.  
  
Kumagawa is an imaginary number. He’s the square root of a negative. He’s a prime number of sorts. No matter what, he will never factor into any sort of equation, he will never be divisible, he doesn’t fit in this scenario so he’s been ignored by now. Even if the story were to focus entirely on him he could not become its main character.  
  
“Lies are destined to become unraveled. He’ll become unraveled by her too, because he doesn’t see what she really is like we do. He doesn’t appreciate her specialness like we do. It’s inevitable right from the start, it’s what you call fate. It’s pre-supposed. Just like meeting her when you were two years old was for you a fateful encounter.”

『You should stop spoiling her so much seriously, no wonder she’s got such a big head. Her forehead’s so huge she’s basically insecure about it at this point and has to cover it with her bangs.』Kumagawa tilted his head to the side confused. 『Yasuke-chan, how come you’re talking to yourself in such a strange way? It’s like uh… having a two sided conversation with yourself? Are you okay?』  
  
That’s right there is no one else in the room.  
There is no butterfly pinned to the wall behind glass.  
The chair swivels around and is empty.  
Matsuda Fukurou died almost two years ago now.  
Before the completion of the Kamukura project was finalized, before he learned all his talents.  
In the middle of the project, suddenly he died and I took over.  
Not because I was his son because I was the next most qualified, the only reason, children are treated basically as adults and not regarded as children but research material first in this school.  
When working on the project together we did not talk once, nor did I desire it.  
I accepted a long time ago after my mother passed that I no longer had a family.  
That there was no place for me, that I was a lost child until Junko found me.

Then suddenly, Matsuda Fukurou’s ghost appeared before me.  
He wouldn’t shut up no matter how much I told him to.  
He tries to help me clarify my own thoughts.  
Perhaps no such thing as ghosts exist and I’m going insane.  
But it’s a rather persistent and annoying insanity then.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi heard two voices in the room but only walked in to see me talking to myself. I give him no explanation, I push past him and shrug him off as usual. I worked so hard to bring him back but our relationship has reset to what it was before.  
  
That is to say we can’t become friends, nor can we become enemies.  
  
Even after talking so much I comprehend nothing at all, but that word still lingers in my mind. Fate.  
I absolutely despise the word fate with every part of my being.  
Meeting Enoshima Junko, from that point forward my life was predetermined, it was called fate.  
When you open the beginning of a novel, as much as it might seem that the events are in suspense, that they being suspended might snap or break at any moment it’s simply not true.  
The moment you start a novel, everything was written beforehand, up until the ending everything’s determined. You’re simply a witness.  
That’s what I am, a witness to my own life, everything else was determined by Enoshima Junko beforehand, I just watched the events play out helpessly.  
If everything about me was written beforehand, then why was I even born?  
If my whole life was just a stage play, what was the point of participating at all? Why did I even bother to fall in love?  
It’s just like that for other people to, people are born talented, or they’re born unremarkable.  
Just like God is childish and cruel, Enoshima Junko who dictated my fate was childish and cruel.  
Arbitrary.  
Black or White.  
Ever since she was born, we’ve had no future.  
The ending was pre-determined.  
That’s the story I’m about to tell.  
Everything has already happened, I’m simply recounting what happened to me. What other people witnessed in their memories that I’m going through right now just before erasing them.  
Just as before, just as with the tragedy and when I tried to protect Enoshima Junko, everything centered around me, I was a main character of sorts, I was standing at the zero and yet I did nothing.  
So that’s why this time as well, I’ll do nothing but recount the tale, as there’s nothing I can do to interrupt the ending. The ending is already written, the moment you began reading this book.

**😈**

  
A story of two despairs meeting that began and ended in despair, a story about nothing,  a story about the end of the world, this isn’t anything so presumptuous. This is a story told by a loner. Don’t underestimate loners though. In order to become closer together, human beings have to show their weaknesses to one another. However, a loner who is close to no one, therfore has no weaknesses. They live unattached. They are truly free. This story being told is not catered to anyone but myself, therefore there are no biases and no attempts to curve the story.  
  
Even if I’m not omniscient like the previous narrators, that should be enough to make up for it. You could say this story began from when I was two years old, when I met Enoshima Junko but none of that matters anymore. A lot happened since the, the boy named Matsuda Yasuke was lost, thne he wasn’t. Then Enoshima Junko was lost, then she was taken to an imaginary place called Jabberwock island, like a girl falling down a rabbit hole, then she wasn’t lost anymore. The moment she came back in the real world, she threw a tantrum, managed to drag even unmovable Kamukura Izuru into her tantrum and then was stopped by Kurokami medaka.  
  
Matsuda Yasuke watched, straining his face to show no emotion as Kurokami Medaka dragged both of them back in by the hair. “Izuru probably won’t do anything, he’s more on the timid side but…. If you don’t tie her up before she wakes up, she’s going to do something annoying again.” He said, his long thin eyebrows knitting.  
  
When Hinata Izuru opened his eyes again, he had one red eye and one green one. The sicentist Matsuda Yasuke had no idea how exactly his eyes had spontaneously changed colors like that but decided he would study it later. He looked over the basement room that they were in, covered in wires like they were straight out of a cyber punk set. Together the three of them, Kamukura Izuru, Komaeda Nagito, and Matsuda Yasuke had stolen the prototype New World Program and reworked a bootleg version of it in the basement of the Neurology Building, where both Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi were being kept comatose after they had been discovered washed up on the shore together.  
  
Kamukura approached Kurokami Medaka with the plan to make amends for his past actions, as an opportunity to save Kumagawa Misogi who showed no signs of recovery. That it would take sixteen of them diving into the program, participating on the island’s rehabilitation, sixteen of his friends and fellow classmates in order to help rebuild his ego from the shattered remains that had been left after he smashed his head against the riverbed and drowned.  
  
Yasuke Matsuda had no idea whether they had successfully tricked Kurokami Medaka or not. Perhaps she saw through them to begin with, she was a smart girl, but she was also occasionally so smart and trusting she overlapped into stupid. She loved so much inhumans she never guessed that they could be deceiving her. Being the protagonist of a mystery novel was not her genre no matter how stoic she was. However, even if she had seen through them, all they needed to do was dangle the words ‘you can save him’ in front of her eyes.

People like that, who would go to the literal end of the world to save others, were the easiest to manipulate.  Yasuke knew that better than most, the strings that connected people might as well have been a puppeteers strings. That was why he had vowed to never be connected again, to never try to save others, and that way he could make up for the mistakes of his past.  
  
Now they were sitting at the aftermath of the game. Kurokami Medaka, the weird girl that she was held no anger at all towards Yasuke for tricking her.  
  
Immediately after she woke up from the program, Yasuke went to her first. “Ummm… I’m not sure how to put this, being polite isn't really my thing, but sorry you know for trying to kill you. My bad really. That was shitty of me.”  
  
“Ah, thank you! Usually I have to beat people up before they apologize. Though, I’m disappointed I won’t get to fight you.”  
  
That girl said in an energetic way. That made Yasuke only blink. _I know I’m a loud mouth but that’s all I am, I can’t fight. I’m too fragile. I’m a pacifist. Like a single flower blooming in the middle of a war zone. Please don’t step on me Kurokami Medaka._

Those thoughts ran through him at once, rapid fire. “Th-that’s fine, really. Anyway, since I’m a useless piece of shit as usual at times like this can I ask you something? Can you go and get Kamukura Izuru and Enoshima Junko for me? Please?”  
  
“Oh, wow. It’s rare for others to say please when they make requests of me. That’s why I won’t let you down for sure, Matsuda.”  
  
Then she smiled at him like an angel and disappeared. _What, just because I said please? Get higher standards for how you’re treated… jeez what have people even been doing to this girl before this point?_  
  
As she disappeared, Yasuke Matsuda vowed not to get onthat girl’s badside. He also, vowed not to get on that girl’s good side either. If he was nothing to her at all that would be for the best, because it seemed everybody else already asked too much of Kurokami Medaka. That was what it meant to be tied to others, to have the bonds of sentiment known as hope, placed upon her it seemed.  
  
He was a rude boy, but he wasn’t that rude. Anyway, as everybody slowly got out of their capsules the survivors at least and were thrown into a panic searching for Junko that had gone missing, completely calmly Kurokami Medaka went to retrieve them.  
  
Kamukura Izuru and Enoshima Junko. The world destroyers. That title was no exaggeration, Yasuke was too serious to play around like those with chuunibyou syndrome. Those two accomplices had seriously threatened to destroy the world.

However, Kurokami Medaka dragged them back to this place with a smile on her face like it was nothing at all. They were probably in the middle of some dramatic confrontation that was like the climax of their arcs, only for Kurokami to suddenly appear and swiftly knock them out, like a sudden genre change from tragedy to comedy. Like if Mercutio were to slip on a banana peel and stab himself with his own sword rather than to be accidentally killed in the fight between Tybalt and Romeo.  
  
Kurokami Medaka as an entity was stronger than the world destroyers. She was what you would call the world’s strongest. Perhaps the world destroyers could outwit her and plan around her, but individually she was stronger than them.  
  
Izuru realized his situation right away. “Kurokami, umm… my bad actually.” He said awkwardly after waking up, scratching behind his head at his long hair. It was a Hajime-like gesture, but spoken in Izuru’s dull voice. “I’m ashamed… about everything really. My life is one of nothing but shame. Jabberwock island was so… so, so, so, so, embarrassing.”  
  
He flip flopped like that, between artfully describing it like Dazai, and getting exasperated like Hajime.  
  
“Wow, two people apologizing to me today. I only had to hit Kamukura once.”

 _What have people been doing to this poor girl! I want to protect her from them! No Yasuke, fight it, fight the impulse._ Despite his inner turmoil at how easily Kurokami let others walk all over her still, Yasuke kept his face at the default resting state, which was extremely annoyed glare.  
  
They then called off the search together, and while a few went to look at their unconscious loved ones, Kamukura, Medaka and Yasuke improvised using some of the computer wires to tie enoshima Junko to a one of those spinning office chairs and wait for her to wake up. See! Having so many extra and excess wires lying around for the sake of that cyberpunk aesthetic turned out to be useful in the end.  
  
Enoshima Junko, like a princess who had pricked her finger and fallen into a deep sleep woke up. “Ugh, like why do I have such a headache?” She said before her eyes fluttered awake. Just like everything else she did, she woke up beautifully, her face flushing as it came to life, her makeup partly smeared from Kurokami dragging her over. A beautiful disaster. “Oh, Medaka-chan, you’re the headache.”  
  
“Say what you want Ensohima, but you’re finally acknowledging me! Even if it’s just acknowledging me as a pain!”

 _This girl seems incredibly lonely._ Yasuke observed, once again trying not to have his heart moved by her.  
  
Enoshima Junko rolled her head around, as if testing out it was still attached. That made sense as she had been in a coma, and her consciousness had left her body to enter the virtual world, and then was reuploaded into her body again. She looked like a puppeteer, testing the joints of her puppet after all the strings had been cut and reattached again. Then, she tilted her head at an odd angle.  
  
“Hmmm, I’m way less annoyed than usual for some reason. Hey, where’s Misogi-senpai?” She asked, and the question seemed genuine. Perhaps she had forgotten, Enoshima Junko’s high functioning brain was delicate machinery Yasuke had researched it several times, and Kurokami Medaka probably just gave her a concussion.  
  
Nobody answered her. Nobody said a thing. Izuru Kamukura, Kurokami Medaka, they too had left behind something essential on Jabberwock island even if they managed to escape. They recognized the loneliness in her eyes, that echoed in that question.  
  
“I see.” Two words she seemed to express all of her emotions in that simple response. Enoshima Junko’s eyes took in everything. There was a phrase, Shougi is just math. It’s memorizing every single route your opponent could possibly take, and looking at every single move your opponent could make and predicting from there. Shougi was just math, but to Enoshima Junko, everything was math, with those eyes of hers she looked as if she were recalculating. Then a smile spread across her painted on lips, a ditzy, carefree smile. “Goooosh, senpai, he just goes and does whatever he wants doesn’t he? Who does that loser think he is really?”

Rather than expression annoyance she seemed a bit sad. No, damnit Yasuke don’t be taken in. _You’re the last person on earth who gets to complain about other people just doing whatever they want!_ He wanted to grab her shoulders and screamed at her face. Instead, he decided to keep his cool and keep glaring at her. She would probably get the message from just that right.  
  
In romantic shoujo manga where characters are able to understand each other from just a glance, maybe they childhood friends from age two had that kind of mind reading ability.  
  
_Probably not actually._  
_Damnit me, stop disagreeing with me. Pick a side already! Preferably, my own._  
  
It was only then, that seemingly carefree girl noticed she was tied up. Only when she tried to stand up on her own. “Eh…?” She tilted her head again. “Are you trying to do something kinky, Matsuda-kun? It’s not nice to tie up another man’s woman you know.”

 _Another man?_ _  
_ He did not quite get what she was referring to. He also had no idea why Enoshima Junko was playing at this situation completely normal, when a moment ago she had thrown a tantrum, tried to kill Kumagawa Misogi, and almost lost it.  
  
But, that was probably Enoshima Junko’s nature. She could throw away her sanity on a whim, and she could regain it on a whim as well. Both parts were just equally an act. If she ever genuinely lost her mind though, if control were wrested away from her that almost fascinated as a neurologist.

_No, sssssh mad scientist thoughts. Go away. Somebody in this room has to pretend to be sane. A comedy that’s all eccentric funny people with no straight man never works out._

Izuru was the first to speak up. In annoyance. “You tried to kill Kumagawa-senpai, there’s no way we’d let you go free. We’re not that stupid.”  
  
“What if I said I was weally sorry! With an extra uwu!”

Kurokami Medaka tugged on his arm. “She looks like she wants to repent, Kamukura.”  
  
“Correction, most of us here are not that stupid.” Kurokami Medaka did not even notice she was insulted. “You can’t just do what you like. We’re going to stop you, and we’re going to get our friends back from the program. The only reason you’re still alive is because Kumagawa-senpai is my friend and I don’t want to hurt him more than I already have.”  
  
“Upupupu, but I always do what I like, and well about killing Misogi ummm… it’s like.” She smiled again. “Forget about that, I changed my mind.”  
  
“Don’t change your mind so easily!” Izuru snapped back at her.  
  
“Don’t tell me what to do!” She snapped back at him in an equally childish voice.  
  
Yasuke could tell right away if they were left around each other, the two world destroyers would bring out the absolute worst in each other. Just then, Enoshima Junko kicked the floor and pushed her wheelie chair forward with her feet alone. She made it all the way to the main computer, and picked up a pen with her teeth and started to tap at the keyboard.  
  
“What do you think you’re doing?”  
  
“Working on a recovery program, duh.”  
  
“Recovery is impossible. Your own splinter Junkai said so.”  
  
“Yeah, well maybe for a lame Junko like her, but me the cooler Junko it’s totally legit.” SHe said with a pencil dangling from her mouth again. “There’s two viwuses wrapped around the central program, the bookmaker viwus and the Alter Ego virus, we’ll have to undo and contain those. Then it’s just a matter of retrieving the egos from the data. What are you guys all looking at me like that for, this is so easy a preschooler could do it?”  
  
“Well… if you’re doing it then yes, a preschooler is doing it.” Izuru remarked in annoyance. “I still don’t trust you, you’re going to get bored and screw with things again it-”  
  
“Hey, screwing with things is MIsogi’s thing and not mine besides. I can be patient when I need to be. I choose to be impatient impulsive.”  
  
“She chooses to be annoying, what a convenient narrative you’ve chosen for yourself.” Izuru remarked again.  
  
“I also choose to be this awesome, but anyway. It took me two years of careful planning to destroy the academy, it’s not like I just went in destroying stuff willy nilly, even though that would be way more fun.” Enoshima Junko gave a wistful sigh, as if she expected anybody there to sympathize with her. She really was impudent. “If it means feeling a greater despair later, I can put up with tedium. The anticipation of despair is it’s own kind of despair. This is like uhhh, yeah it’s like deep sea fishing. Senpai’s fallen so deep into the ocean he’s basically at the bottom, he doesn’t have eyeballs anyway, that’s why it’s going to be extra fun to sink my nails into his flesh and drag him back to the surface.”  
  
Junko started to work. Before anybody told her what to do she figured it out for herself. She tapped away at one key at a time, as if she did not even expect for them to untie her arms. She had already decided, and she knew just like clockwork they would eventually go along with her decision and get dragged along by her whims. That was how it always went for her.  
  
Izuru and Medaka glanced at one another.  
  
Finally, Matsuda Yauske spoke up. “Fine, just make sure she’s never alone. One of us has to be with her at all times.”  
  
“That’s such a dumb idea. All of you guys are so easy to manipulate. Throw chum in front of the great white shark why don’t you? Well, I won’t take advantage of it, this is some amazing character development I’ve gone through, but it’s really, reaaaaaally, tempting if you guys are going to be so dumb.”  
  
“You can at least try to hide such an ugly personality!” Yasuke snapped back at her.  
  
“It’s not nice to call girls ugly,” Junko said back before focusing on the computer screen again. “You’re such a bully Yasuke-chan, you’re like one of those boys on the playground who insults girls to cover up their real feelings. What did I ever do to you anyway, well besides everything.”  
  
Even if she was right, she had a talent for putting things in the most annoying way possible.

That was the agreement they had come up with, or rather Enoshima Junko had decided upon and they followed. Enoshia Junko would work on the recovery program with Kamukura Izuru and at all times, at least two of them would be in the room with her. Kurokami Medaka, Kamukura Izuru, or Matsuda Yauske taking shifts.

 

**😈  
  
  
**

Once upon a time Sun Wukong made a bet with the Budha. That he could jump father than the budha’s palm. He jumped all the way to the edge of the universe. Only to see that he was still standing on the tip of the budha’s finger.  
  
That was how Matsuda saw his relationship to Enoshima Junko. No matter where he walked, there would be long shadows cast over him, and long red nails enclosing around him. Even if he were to flee to America, or the edge of the abyss so you know also America, he would look down and see that he was only on the tip of her red nails. Everything else that surrounded him, brain scans in front of a glowing box, a monitor, long paper readouts of brian waves, paper falling to the floo, needles with strange liquids, pills, hospital lights from above, a surgeon’s gown, a scalpel, Hinata Hajime clinging despately to his hand, even if that storm of objects were to swirl around him everything that encompassed the whole mess of a story of his life so fa,r he could look up and see Enoshima Junko’s hand still there string attached to all of it somehow, manipulating those many criss crossing strings perfectly.  
  
He wanted to escape her, to run away, at least far enough away so he could distingush what was Enoshima Junko and what was himself. However, he could not claim everything that went wrong was just Enoshima Junko’s manipulation. Perhaps she had foreseen it coming, but as a character he had made his own choices.  
  
He killed people. The former class president, and Kumagawa Misogi. Actually, he killed Kumagawa twice, however Kumagwa was half of a person to begin with so that still only amounted to two people. He also had hid several bodies and did everything he could to over up her crimes. He was guilty several times over, even if his crimes had been undone.  
  
He had given up on it all and tried to kill Ryoko Otonashi, and then himself to atone. However, he was not allowed even to die. Kumagawa Misogi undid even his own death. He was alive again after having died, he was a murderer even though his victims were technically still alive.  
  
A confusing state of being to say the least. Confusing in an annoying way, how very Kumagawa-like.  
  
Either way, he had decided that he had not been revived from the dead to be saved, to be forgiven, but rather to be punished. If Kumagawa was capable of forgiving him for what he had done, he probably would have let him rest and stay dead.  
  
So he was alive again. Just like his entire life had been written on Enoshima Junko’s whim, it had been rewritten on Kumagawa Misogi’s whim. Kumagawa… Kumagawa… what did he think of that person.  
  
A male Enoshima Junko?  
  
He was chaotic and reckless like her, and just like her he seemed to cause people to fall and drag others down into despair as naturally as breathing.  
  
Except unlike her, Kumagawa Misogi tried to do the right thing. He felt guilty when he did the wrong thing. Yasuke did not know whether his ability to feel remorse made him better or worse than Junko. It was frustrating, because Yasuke too could feel remorse, and he did not know if that made his own actions in the downfall of Hope’s Peak better or worse.

Kumagawa was cruel like Junko, that was all he could see. He had cruelly forced Yasuke to live. Living was his punishment. He had decided to make his punishment far worse, by living right next to Enoshima Junko, and Kamukura Izuru as they worked on the project together.  
  
Looking at both of them, all he could think of was. _The reason Kamukura is like this, it’s my fault. I’m the one who did all those brain surgeries._  
  
He would look at Junko and think. _This is my fault, I’m the one who covered up every bad thing she did, I let her do whatever she wanted because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. I should have stopped her a long time ago._

He had first met Enoshima Junko when she was two years old.  
She must have been so easy to kill back then.  
Two year olds are notoriously weak. So basically, everything that happened past that day was his fault, for not killing her when he had the chance.

Anyway, he was currently zoning out into another fit of self loathing because instead of working on the program again, Enoshima Junko and Kamukura Izuru were arguing. (Actually he preferred to be called Hinata Izuru by this point so as his older brother I should respect this).  
  
“Hey, Hinata-senpai what does this button do?” Junko asked, tapping her red nail on one of the keys.  
  
Ever since her injuries at the hands of the Utlimate Despair, Junko had to do all her work one handed. Her other hand was just a fake prosthetic, covered by a glove she was wearing. Her eye was covered by the ‘world’s cutest girl in the world’s cutest eyepatch’ eyepatch that she wore, a black one with red trim. The moment she had looked in the mirror and realized her eye was missing she screamed for Mukuro to go get it for her.  
  
“You know what that button does. You’re the one who designed the Alter Ego virus, and came up with the plan for using the Neo World program originally. Also, you surpassed the skills of the ultimate programmer in a few weeks to make that plan a reality. You probably know more about this than I do.”  
  
“Well, yeah, but what does this button do?” She asked again.  
  
“I know you’re just asking to annoy me. I’m not falling for it.”  
  
“Then why do you keep responding? Hey, Hinata-senpai be honest. You actually really like talking to me don’t you, your tsun tsun is just showing.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Hey, Hinata-senpai. Let's have a debate on the finer points of despair.  
  
"No thank you.”  
  
“You’re a terrible senpai. You’re always so cold to your underclassmen.”  
  
“Well, you are a terrible person so I’m te senpai you deserve.”  
"Matsuda thinks we should talk about it!"  
  
“Shut your whore mouth.” Yasuke Matsuda said, looking up from the manga he was reading while supervising the both of them.

“See, that's Matsuda-kun speak for yes."  She was sitting with a keyboard in her lap, one of her hand deftly working the keys. She was not actually slacking off on her work at all, but putting her full attention on something was almost impossible for Junko.  
  
Technically she was not lying when she said that she could be patient and wait to destroy things. However, she was still a girl that got bored easily and to enertain herself she was destroying their patience instead.

“Why don’t you wait until Kumagawa-senpai is out of the program and talk about it?"  
  
Why would she want to talk about it with him?  
  
Yasuke tried hard not to think about it.  
  
"Come on I'm interested to hear about your resolution. You said you chose hope right, but you don't really believe in hope like Naegi-kun does do you? You're just picking what seems slightly more interesting to you. I appeared in front of you and convinced you despair was the better option, then you were convinced towards hope, but all you're doing is following still."   
  
"Junko, if you love yourself so much and love splintering your personality so much why not have this conversation in a mirror?"  
  
"Hey, you know your voice is like Kamukura-senpai but you're not responding to me like Kamukura-senpai would. He just would not even bother to respond to me at all. There's no way Hajime would be able to come up with a witty comeback either."  
  
"..."  
  
"Oh that's far more like Kamukura-senpai. However, now you're just trying too hard. Hey, Kamukura-senpai entered the program to get his emotions back but he was afraid of dying and losing what little he had game in the year he spent as himself. Hajime in the game was just a fabrication of his recovered past self. So what does that make you exactly? Both of them were terrified to die, but in the end isn't it just like most of the died to create you?"   
  
"It's change Enoshima. Everyone goes through it, except for you. Why don't you try dying once?"   
  
"Come on, argue for the sake of hope, for sentiment! There are plenty of despair-filled sentiments, after all what about somebody that you're so close to that the closeness causes you pain? You're such a huge fan of hope now you could at least try to make a case for it." 

"I decided not to run away."  
  
"You know when people make declarations like that, the meanings exist to be dirtied, you'll fall apart again."  
  
"I suppose you would know better than most."  
  
"Eh?"  
  
"When you do finally see your special person, your interesting Misogi, you'll probably just fall back into boredom again, just as you always do."  
  
"Mrrrrrp." Junko made the noise of an agitated cat. Once again she liked to bite into others without getting bitten back.   
   
The days passed like that, Yasuke alone in the room together with Izuru and Junko, it was basically a self harm ritual, he was punishing himself by being in their presence to exasperate his own self loathing.  
  
At that point Izuru noticed him. “Yasuke, you don’t have to stay if being near me is hurting you. I don’t blame you for what happened. I’m the one who chose to become like this.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Even if it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. It’s inevitable given the weak person I am.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You were the only one who was kind to me, I don’t think of you as somebody who did anything bad to me. I think of you as a brother.”  
  
Izuru had decided to accept, and embrace who he was, and all of those choices. He did not lay a single bit of the blame at Yasuke’s feet. He even forgave him. However, that forgiveness, those kind words he tried to comfort Yasuke with. They were another punishment. They hurt him far more than they helped.  
  
Yasuke sighed. “I’m not doing this for you, half dumbass. It’s just if I leave you in the room alone with Junko for five minutes she’s going to give you another villain speech that turns you back to the side of despair.”  
  
“It’s true!” Junko called out from her chair as she spun around while working to relieve a little bit of her boredom. She ended up upside down in her chair still tapping away at her keyboard, she looked like she was posing for a magazine cover. “I’m a total baller when it comes to join me speeches, palpatine wishes he was me.”  
  
“It’s amazing you compare yourself to palpatine because he has a much prettier face than you, ugly.” Matsuda spat back.

So, the three of them continued like that. The unwilling, and unfortunate trio, bound by fate, punishment, or whatever. Until winter turned to spring. Matsuda started to wonder though, what exactly had changed about Junko.  
  
She had managed to hide this destructive, despairing, impulsive, wreck of a girl for the seventeen years that he had known her. At one point he had mistaken Enoshima Junko for a normal girl, and a normal childhood friend, an amazing delusion he was quite aware.  
  
Either Enoshima Junko was the world’s most clever person, or he was the world’s stupidest boy. It was probably a combination of the two, actually.  
  
The Junko he had known in the past, the one who had put on the act of being his childhood friend. She was a lot more stoic than her current, unrestrained self. She had the same energetic, cheerful girl personaliy, she often invaded your personal space, she still pretended to be a good girl only to go behind your back and cause trouble, she still seemed to thrive purely on being the center of attention, the central spotlight but… how did he put it.  
  
There was a quiet part of her. No matter how loud of an act she put on, some part of her always seemed to be quiet and withdrawn. She at the same time got closer to you than anybody else you knew, but was also far away in some unreachable place.  
  
Yasuke thought, he truly thought that he was one of the few people who knew about this quiet side of hers. Junko acts cheerful and like someone who can get along with others easily, but in fact she’s a lonely girl. I’m the only one who can see this, I’m the only one who can ease her loneliness. Once you start thinking of that you’re trapped.

There’s no lonely girl behind the mask. There’s nothing at all behind the mask. Her current audacious self was just more of her play acting, she was testing what she could get away with. It was all one big joke to her like, how much can I play up this villainous persona before the great hero Medaka comes to hit me.  
  
Enoshima Junko was two faced by nature, but only in the sense that she switched between two different, equally fake faces. Yasuke Matsuda refused to believe otherwise.  
  
But say, if there was a change in Enoshima Junko’s nature. If she had dropped her stoicity and become unrestrained, if she was trying to be somewhat closer to her true chaotic self, then the reason for that was Kumagawa Misogi.

Basically, Yasuke had nothing to do with it. So he had no thoughts on the matter. The world continued to spin.

**😈  
**

Spring arrived, and with that a new semester. Hope’s Peak reopened again after the controversy that Enoshima Junko’s apparent ‘suicide’ and the information that leaked with that. The 79th class had been ushered in with a deliberate attempt at marketing them to counter all the bad press.  
  
THe fact that Yasuke Matsuda had to be so painfully aware of the politics of this school, especially the research side even now was probably just another punishment. Not only was the 79th class welcomed in, but the Kurokami Conglomerate donated an equal amount of money to the school as the Togami Family in order to ensure that the transfer class 13 could stay another semester. Apparently, more students were even being allowed to transfer in. The money was used to cover up various scandals, especially when other backers and funders pulled their money.  
  
Apparently, even the charges against Fukawa Toko, and Munakata Kei had been dropped due to massive piles of money. Fukawa started telling everyone that officially made her Togami’s servant, as Togami had bought and purchased her much to Togami’s annoyance. Classes resumed for everybody, except those in the basement. Even Kurokami Medaka would attend school when she was not on guard dog duty.  
  
Pekoyama, Mukuro and her, three terrifyingly strong girls would take shifts as the watch dog. Shuichi had left the program as well, but he was more like one of those cute timid dogs, like a beagle, or a really scared puppy. He was a part of the 79th class officially now a hope’s peak student, a first year hope’s peak student and a second year highschooler, he would attend classes in the mornings and then return every day without fail to attend to Kyoko’s hospital bed. He even visited her more than Naegi Makoto, the other human puppy.  
  
Naegi was rather busy though, as a terror had been let loose. After defeating both the despairs, and the minuses, as well as the not equals who terrified the school, another threat had appeared that he had to deal with.  
  
“It’s here! It’s appeared!” Kuwata Leon shouted, complaining to newly elected student council president Naegi Makoto. “The baseball club has suffered a big loss! Even though it was 1 vs 9 we were totally crushed! I don’t even like baseball but I don’t want to lose my title man I need the money to start my music career!”  
  
The ultimate soccer player was in his office too. “It’s even worse over here! An entire soccer team had 100 points scored on them in under 90 minutes! She must manipulate time or something!”

The Ultimate Baksetball star was in attendance as well. “The basketball team was decimated! For some strange reason we have negative points! What in the world did it to us?”  
  
Suffce to say, the talented Ultimates were not used to being bested so easily and had come to fill his office with complaints. “What the hell is that thing? A superhuman? A monster? No… Wait, it’s It’s… Kurokami Medaka!”

“Ahahaahahahahaahahahahaahahaha!” Naegi Makoto watched her fun by the window, dribbling a basketball, kicking a soccer ball and holding a bat in her mouth.

“Please do something pointy haired president!” Leon Kuawata begged.  
  
“The only person we can turn to is you, Jersey president!” The ultiamte basektball player reasoned.    
  
“I’m begging you, an awkwardly average dude president!” The utlimate soccer player pleaded.  
  
Makoto shuffled in his chair, “Umm… You guys don’t respect me at all do you?” When Zenkichi had been standing behind his back as his muscle, he had definitely been madde fun of less. His sensei needed to return from the virtual world already. “Come on Leon, you should know my name we’re classmates that makes us friends already. Fine, I’ll let you insult me, but that’s because I have a best friend like Togami who would never insult me.”  
  
“I don’t need to insult you. Everything about your life is already such a well told joke I have nothing to add onto it.” Togami said as he sorted through paperwork in the corner without even looking up.  
  
“See, he just said he would never insult me! An unlucky nobody like me couldn’t ask for a better best friend!” Naegi Makoto said. Kirgiri was no longer around to point it out, and because of that Makoto had become completely deaf to when Togami was insulting him.  
  
“Well, I will try to talk to her but it’s kind of useless without Zenkichi around,but you guys should admire the rare turn of events. Kurokami-san has finally become, a kid like us!”  
  
“So she’s rampaging without Zenkichi around because he had to take a sick leave? Is she punishing the school is that it man?” Leon Kuwata whined.  
  
“Huh? No, I mean I guess she’s a little lonely since her friend is missing, so she’s trying to make a bunch of new friends, just like a normal girl!”

Everybody stared at Naegi Makoto, the power of friendship personified as if he was delusional. There was no way to smash the rose tinted hope glasses off of his face though, Enoshima Junko had already tried a great deal and failed to succeed.  
  
In another wing of the school Kurokami Medaka had already settled down to eat, and had ended up eating more than the Super High School Level chef could cook in one sitting. After avoiding a direct conversation with him for several months, Kurokami Medaka finally looked up at Matsuda Yasuke. “Whew, I’m full, thanks for the food! Humans need meat to bring out their energy! And, I’ve kept you waiting, what is it? Matsuda Yasuke?”  
  
Matsuda Yasuke had called to ask her about the ghost that he had started to see more than a week ago. Fukurou Matsuda. However, as blunt as his tongue tended to be he also tended to beat around the bush. “Watching you eat was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen please never do that again.” Matsuda said, wondering if he should become a monk and starve himself in the mountains to make up for all the cows that had to be killed to feed that one girl. “Really, it’d be best for me to leave this academy. I only came here for Enoshima Junko, and now I want nothing to do with that ugly ass girl. But… I made a promise with Anshin’in-san, that old hag loves drama too much. I came to meet you, as Matsuda Fukurou’s hidden son.”  
  
“Matsuda Fukurou…” It seemed the serious Medaka had returned for amoemnt, but then suddenly she slammed both her hands on the table and was squealed in girlish glee. “Really! So you’re Matsuda Fukurou’s son! Then you’re kinda like a little brother of mine.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Hey can I call you little brother? Why are you sitting face to face to me, sit right next to me little bro!”  
  
“I just said no! Call me little brother again and I’ll slit my own throat to escape you, don’t test me you’re already vastly overestimating my will to live.”  
  
“Hahaha! What a silly thing for my little brother to say.”  
  
“Did you not hear a single word I just said? How can one girl so smart be so dumb! Why am I surrounded by smart people who act like dumbasses? At least Kumagawa Misogi has the gall to be a genuine real dumbass, so he’s not disappointing me with the expectation of being smart. Actually, he’s disappointing regardless but still.”  
  
“Wow, you really do like talking to yourself little brother.”  
  
“I do not! I’m just a loner.” It’s the job of the narrator to talk to themselves at length to tell a story, how disrespectful of her really. Anyway Kurokami Medaka seemed to belong to her own world that she was graceful enough to let everybody else occasionally live in. Matsuda felt a terrifying aura. _I can feel it. She’s exactly the same as Maguro when it comes to younger siblings._

This is why human breeding was a terrifying thing, I mean it was ethically bad too Yasuke the mad scientist conceded, but also it had resulted in the terrifying siblings known as Kurokami Medaka and Kurokami Maguro.

“Umm...Anyway, stupid.”  
  
“Hmm? What is it little brother?”  
  
“I heard from Anshin’in-san that it was you who killed my father. Is it true?” It was not that Yasuke wanted to destroy her good mood, it was just that he despised happiness in general.  
  
“Yes, I was the one who killed Matsuda Fukurou. Because of me, the man I loved as a father died. I will listen to you without making any excuses.” Kurokami Medaka’s wide girlish eyes sharpened, and he saw all of her features darken for a moment before she relaxed back in her chair. Matsuda could not shake the feeling she was a queen on a throne waiting to give judgement.

 _We’re supposed to be going back to daily school life hijinks after two depressing death game related arcs, what’s with this serious mood. Oh right it’s me, the world’s biggest hater of fun._ “Well, I’m not going to complain since I’m an adult. I just want to know how he died so suddenly. We were working on the same project when he just disappeared out of nowhere. Junko wasn’t even at the academy yet so it couldn’t have been her.” Yasuke sorted to want to blame her anyway, just for existing, how dare she really.  
  
Not only had he failed to kill her when she was two years old, and very squishy. Ikusaba Mukuro had failed to kill her when they were in the womb together. She could have just eaten her. So, this was equally Mukuro’s fault as well.  
  
“It’s not like I care that he died. He never once had any affection for me as a father, and I never had any affection as a son. I don’t really have a mother either but that has nothing to do with this.”  
  
“You have a big sister though!”  
  
“Hey, can you use that mouth of yours to do something more useful like eat shit and die please?”

“I understand. As the successor to the Kurokami Family, I have seven suitors. No I should say had your father was one of them.”  
  
“Suitors?”

“Yes. So I might not have been your older sister but also your mother.”  
  
Yasuke’s eye twitched. He was sure he felt a blood vessel burst behind one of his eyes.  
  
“Your eyes are getting all red.”  
  
“It’s nothing, I just didn’t get enough sleep last night.”  
  
“What did you dream about?”  
  
“A horrible nightmare. Some really annoying loud girl who can’t read the room kept acting fiendly towards me, she wore a pony tail and a vest and belly shirt with a high collared jacket.”  
  
“Wow, that’s exactly what I’m wearing right now?” Kurokami Medaka must have never been insulted in her life, as she seemed to have no idea when it was happening.  
  
“Funny coincidence, that.” Yasuke shook his head. “Seven suitors, you must be really popular, or really slutty.”  
  
“Slutty, huh what’s that?” She was way too innocent. If Yauske did not feel like the worst already, he would… well he’d feel like more of the worst somehow. “If that was the case then it would be fine. However, this doesn’t have anything to do with how popular I am. THe suitors weren’t after me but the Kurokami family. THe family has seven branch families, it’s been a tradition that the succesor of the Kurokami Family was to be courted by each of these families. It’s basically selective breeding, to mix in new blood.”

Once again the mad scientist part of his brain wondered if after carefully breeding for analytical talents for generations only to produce Kurokami Medaka their greatest success ever, the Kurokamis would be disappointed to know that Enoshima Junko had happened completely in the wild separate of any breeding who far surpassed any analysis Kurokami had. That’s why human breeding was bad. Well, that and the ethics too of course.  
  
“The courtship was like a fight over a political marriage for power. The result what as what happened two years ago, when I graudated middle school the suitors including your father came together. It’s now called the Jet Black wedding feast. Your father won, but he only cared about me as a daughter not a wife. Later, when I found his research he was committing on the side, the same research he had used to win and protect me from the other suitors, I reported it and he was killed by an unknown entity and his research was completely trashed, except for that which had already been invested in the Kamukura project.”  
  
“It’s completely different from what I thought. That annoying hag Anshin’in-san needs to stop leading people on, I don’t get how she claims to be empty on the inside when she’s so full off shit.”  
  
“No it’s kind of bad you’re satisfied with this. Don’t you feel anything for your family at all?”  
  
“I already told you I don’t have one. I don’t even want one.”  
  
“Huh… why?”  
  
“Friends and family they just…” He remembered what he had said to Kumagawa Misogi when they first met, a long time ago. “They lower your intensity of a human being.”

As an adult it was a stupid thing to say. It absolutely reeked of teen angst and self importance. However, that was the conclusion he had come to after turning it over in his head again and again.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Well, because you’re always protecting others isn’t that a liability?” Matsuda simply wanted to give it up, all of his reasons for existing, and then continue existing without reason, that was his punishment. He had stomped over so many for the sake of love so this was the only way he could think of to atone. “ When you were alone you were stronger than anyone else, now that you’ve genuinely become weaker in your personality you’ve started to make more friends, something like that.”  
  
Punishment. To continue existing even after being dealt a fatal wound. Yasuke still felt a phantom pain ache from where Junko had stabbed him in the side all the time. It was like he was constantly bleeding out from there, losing more and more of himself, living with a fatal wound. It didn’t even scar it just kept bleeding.  
  
“Then what about Junko? Have you talked to her yet like you said you were going to all the way back at the school festival?” Kurokami Medaka said, looking right at him.  
  
For a dull girl, she was also undeniably sharp. “Er… if you mean have Junko and I talked about the fact that she murdered me? No. SHe basically just went back to treating me the way she did before and trying to banter with me, and I went along with it.”  
  
“So you didn’t talk?”  
  
“Well you know you can’t have a happy ending without having an honest conversation, that’s why I’m never going to try to talk to anybody honestly again for the rest of my life so I can get the unhappy tragic ending I deserve.” Matsuda said, before glaring back at Medaka. “Besides, you’re the last one who gets to complain about forcing people to go along with your whims. You two are exact opposites, but you’re the same like that as well.”

“Basically he’s saying he’s being a naughty boy and playing along with Junko’s games again even though I told him to stop.” Ajimu Najimi said, suddenly appearing sitting on the table next to them.  
  
“I told you to stop spying on me, old hag.”  
  
“Hmm, have I don’t something to displease you? Didn’t I listen to all your unreasonable requests? Didn’t I give you a bunch of fancy abnormalities so you could fight Kumagawa toe to toe that one time, and then also monitor fifty two rounds of that killing game for you and not use my own power to end it.”  
  
“Yes, you did so can you please pull whatever faustian shit you’re planning on pulling already, and steal my soul or something? Having to keep dealing with you is so annoying. You’re like a poltergeist that doesn’t know how to shut the fuck up.”  
  
“Just stop playing with Enoshima Junko.” Ajimu Najimi said firmly.  
  
“I can’t…”  
  
Ajimu Najimi relented just a little bit. She reached out to pet his hair, only for him to smack he hand away. “I understand. Kumagawa Misogi has replaced you. The same way, that Kumagawa-kun and I could never become a fake family, and I thought it was impossible for him to find a real family at all until he found those despair sisters. Mukuro-chan rendered my existence as his older sister pointless, she Medaka’d me.”  
  
“Umm… please stop using my name as a verb. That’s kind of mean…” Medaka said rather timidly in the background. It was rare for that girl to get insecure, but even she had things she was sensitive about.

Replacing him?  
He had no idea what she was talking about.  
Either way he had decided he had reached his maximum human interaction for the day. Which was one, one whole human. Eventually to repent he’d max his loner stat and become a monk who lives in the woods all day but before that he had to actually bother to fix his mistake with the neo world program.  
  
He had not been able to come out and say _So do you think ghosts are real and one of them is haunting my ass right now?_  He already considered himself stupid but, something like that was far too stupid for him to say. It seemed for now his ass would remain haunted.

**😈**

 

Three scenes pulled out over the next few days, after they were approaching the completion of the world destroyer retrieval program. Yasuke had thought it would be better to name it something less stupid and edgy than ‘world destroyer’ but he left the naming up to Junko and he had to reap the consequences of that action as well.

  
The first was when Ikusaba Mukuro was struggling with the sister she was carrying over her shoulder. She looked like she had picked her up and thrown her over that shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Junko, you have to eat and sleep still otherwise you’ll die at the keyboard.”  
  
“I don’t wanna eat otherwise I’m going to turn fat like you.”  
  
“Junko, come on you’ve been starving yourself lately.”  
  
“I’m not starving myself, my perfect body is perfectly curved. Unlike you whose figure is two parallel lines.”  
  
“Junko, how can I be fat and skinny at the same time? See you’re so delirious even your insults aren’t making sense.” The two sisters had started to act more like normal sisters, which is to say they started to fight more and more frequently.  
  
Yasuke could not tell if their relationship was getting better or worse. He also did not want to get close enough to know, that family had nothing to do with him. In the past if he saw Junko in such a state working herself to the point of starvation he probably would have strapped her down to a bed and fed her with a tube to protect her life.  
  
However, now he merely watched as Mukuro did all the work for him. The idea of her dying still paralyzed him with fear, but the idea of her living scared him just as much. So he did nothing. It had nothing to do with him.  
  
Usually Enoshima Junko needed to be waited on hand and foot because she was a spoiled princess, but in this case Enoshima’s tendency towards obsessiveness had caused her to forget about everything else, even eating and sleeping to rush finishing the program on time. She probably would work until she died without realizing it if Mukuro did not fight her sister tooth and nail.  
  
That was one change in Junko’s mentality as of late. There were others but Yasuke did not even want to begin to think about them. When Mukuro had finally finished struggling with her sister to get her into bed, she sighed exhausted on the other side of the door. “You know I was always worried my sister was either going to try to destroy the world, or become a neet because she was so disinterested with the outside world. Now I’ve lived long enough to see both.”

Of course Enoshima Junko still applied her makeup every day, bathed every day, and redid he hairdye whenever it started to fade. Just because she was obsessively tunnel visioning on Kumagawa did not mean she wasn’t going to look cute. She had priorities.  
  
Yasuke realized Mukuro was speaking to him. It was strange. Technically the two of them had grown up together, they had even walked to school on either side of Junko several times, Mukuro often wearing either camouflage paint, or an army helmet covered in twigs to school. Yet, they had no relationship at all. Mukuro was probably only trying to talk to him because Makoto was encouraging her to be more open lately.  
  
“It’d probably be better if you just let her die.”  
  
“Nah, I don’t think Junko even wants to die anymore, or rather she’s realized dying’s just as boring as living so she’s stopped idealizing it. She’s just stubborn, and obsessive, and also trashy, and she has no consideration for others…”  
  
_Wow this girl really lets loose behind her sister’s back._ Matsuda observed as he listened. “Hey, Ikusaba. Between Kumagawa-kun and I what do you think the difference is? That guy is like family to you right?”  
  
“Umm… well…” Mukuro looked like she was trying to be nice for his sake. Don’t bother. If she shot him in the head right here he would probably thank her. “I don’t really know much about you Matsuda-kun I’m sorry but… since Junko and I were twins a lot of times we get treated like we were both half of the same person. Actually, it was more like Junko was bright and shining like the sun and I was her shadow. It’s probably my fault a little bit too for spoiling her…” Mukuro took too much blame on her shoulders. She was obviously wrong Yasuke decided because everything was actually his fault. Every single crime done on planet earth could somehow be traced back to Yasuke Matsuda, he did it he let out Pandora’s box. “You too Matsuda-kun, you only ever looked at Junko. Misogi-chan was the first person who ever saw me as separate from her.”  
  
Finishing that awkward explanation she walked past him, twiddling her fingers together and leaving him alone.

That’s right he never cared did he? He never even tried to see what Junko so obviously did to her sister, just because she was kind to him.

 _I wonder if Kumagawa is my shadow somehow._ The closer he approached the light named Enoshima Junko, the longer that shadow had grown, until he was entirely eclipsed by it.

 

**😈**

 

The next two encounters could barely be called encounters. They happened in quick succession. Yasuke Matsuda stared at himself in the mirror, he had a case of typical bedhead, but not leaving the basement more than once a week for the past three months had made his hair far worse. It went almost down to the base of his neck now, and he needed to continually tie it back so it did not get in the way of his work.  
  
They had several comatose patients and he was the only doctor around, even though technically he was far more of a mad scientist at this point than a legitimate practice doctor. He was still all they had, since there were no adults involved in this basement side project of theirs. Amazing, children had killed children, children had saved children’s lives and still no adults took notice.  
  
Yasuke would think his life was thematic, if it was not a play put on by Enoshima Junko who abhorred any kind of consistency and was nonsense personified. As he tied his hair up in the mirror again, he heard Junko raising her voice and Kamukura responding in an even tone. They were fighting, again.  
  
“How do you know bringing Komaeda-senpai out of the program is the right thing to do? As long as he’s in the program he’s no longer chronically ill. You’re subjecting him to pain againf or your own selfish desire to see him again.”

  
“Do I even need to bring up your selfishness in regards to Kumagawa Misogi?”  
  
“Well yes, but I’m not pretending that I’m being some great hero rescuing him from the trap that I put him in myself. Besides, obviously having me around made MIsogi’s life like a thousand times better, he told me himself.”  
  
“I’m sure Kumagawa-senpai did not lie about that, because he’s such a truthful person.”  
  
“Hey, shut up.”  
  
“If Kumagawa-senpai wanted to be here, he would be. None of us asked him to stay behind, he just decided that on his own. In fact he probably decided that just to avoid you.”  
  
“He’s just running away from the real world-”  
  
“You’re the world to him, and he’s running away from you.” Kamukura said, in an even voice. “Even if you bring him back, he’ll probably just dump you on the spot and disappear again.”

At that moment he heard the clacking of heels down the hallway. As he finished tying his hair up, Matsuda was pushed out of the bathroom door by Enoshima. She lacked a funny line, or even a rude insult, all she did was mutter a quick, quiet, “Excuse me…”

He heard her murmuring behind the door. "I want to see him again. I want to see him again. I want to see him again. MIsogi, I want to see you again." Even Yasuke was wondering why Ensohima was showing such uncharacteristic, single minded devotion towards something. He had never seen her focus this much in her life, but it was simple. She was driven by the simple desire to see him again, "No matter what..." Junko's voice finished the thought for him. 

Matsuda waited at the door. He had not finished with his hair yet. For some reason he felt a certain warmth, warm enough to melt ice. For some reason he saw the shattering of glass. As the bathroom door opened again, Enoshima Junko was finished. She had reapplied her makeup, but even so her eyes had blurred considerably, and reddened.  
  
He looked past her and saw that the mirror had broken. Rather, Enoshima Junko had broken it, into several,splintering pieces images of herself. Something was fundamentally broken about Enoshima Junko, he had always known about that, but now she was breaking further.  
  
She had done something he had never seen her do.  
  
She cried.  
Enoshima Junko was a spoiled crybaby. She could cry alligator tears at the drop of a hat. That was all true, and he had several memories of the past where she had gotten people to pick on her on purpose, fallen down on purpose, and even destroyed her own sand castle on purpose in order to get him to protect her, pulling on his sleeve with a face full of tears.  
However, not once had he ever seen her genuinely cry.  
She cried.  
For Kumagawa Misogi.  
Out of happiness that Kumagawa Misogi would return soon now that they completed the program. Out of fear that he might not want to return.  
She cried. Not for his sake.  
He had shown her his real crying face, Enoshima Junko was the only person who had ever seen him cry. That was what they ahd promised each other.

But Junko had not once cried in front of him until now.  
  
Junko walked forward, her legs shaking and off balance in heels for once in her life. Something was broken, something was off balance, the person that could fix that balance was not him but Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
“Sorry, to make you wait.”  
  
The words that he never wanted to hear.  
  
“Yasuke-kun. Thank you, I appreciate it.”  
  
It was true. Enoshima Junko only said kind words to hurt other people. The words threatened to deny his entire being, to shatter him he had never wanted to hear her express something so genuine to him again.  
  
Go back to being a cackling witch.  
Go back to being a spoiled princess.  
He did not want to believe that any part of her was real. He did not want to see it, so he simply left her there and ran away. He ran, and ran, and ran, up the stiars until he was on the surface world once more.

Her cried out face, was far worse than the face she had shown him when she was killing him. Yasuke decided as he stared at the sun. After running for who knows how long he had ended up on some far corner of the campus. He stared up at his enemy, the sun.  The sun had fallen low enough to paint the entire sky blood red. Spring had started but the trees were being late to blooming this year, so a lot of dead looking trees had long shadows cast from their branches, winding in every direction. He looked like he was trapped in a maze of their shadows.  
  
Just then after running away from Enoshima Junko. Just by coinidence, he raised his hand to block out the sun’s rays and saw another man standing there amongst the shadows. For a moment because the sun was in his eyes, he mistook the long and thin looking man to be another shadow himself.  
  
“Hmmm, do you attend this academy?”  
  
“Yeah, but I’m not attending it at the moemnt.” Matsuda stared through the gaps in his fingers at his man. The first word to describe him that came to mind was vampire. Which was rather hypocritical since he had spent so much time indoors his skin had become entirely pale, his body skinnier than normal, and his hair so long and greasy he had to tie it back like a prince from the 1800s. The only time he went out was at night nowadays. Also he had been dead once and was revived from the dead shortly after, but didn't particularly feel alive.   
  
He wasn’t a vampire though, he wasn’t even the dregs of a vampire. He was not going to meet a beautiful blonde vampire, get bitten, and have that same blonde vampire living in his shadow anytime soon. He was just a boy who had little regard for his own life and had stopped all attempts at self care.  
  
The man wore all black, and had his raven colored hair slicked back into two points that looked like cat ears, no wait that was far too cute a way of putting it they were devils horns. There were two front locks that fell out of his slicked back hair to frame either side of his face. His skin was pale to the point of being blue, and his eyes looked dull and sunken in.  
  
He was an adult as well. Yasuke had not seen one of those in awhile. If he didn’t count the ghost.   
  
The man stood in front of the dead looking trees, his hands in the pockets of his long black coat. His black tie had a clubs symbol on it, and shadows he leaned forward in such a way shadows fell on his face. “Ahhhh, I apologize. I haven’t introduced myself. The caution you’ve shown a total stranger is extremely appropriate. Treasure it. My name is Kaiki.”  
  
“Kaiki? I don't really fucking care but-"   
  
Yasuke had wanted to think about anything other than Junko’s cried out face, so he was almost grateful such a creepy stranger had shown up. Perhaps this was a fateful encounter and this person would be important later! No stop treating life like a narrative that is exactly what Junko wants.

“Yes. Kai like a mound of clamshells, Ki like dead tree.”  
  
Matsuda’s eyes went to the dead trees in the background. That man was tall, thin, and spindly exactly like those trees. “My name is Matsuda… the kanji are uh…”  
  
“No need to explain. It’s a name I just heard said, but I suppose if I’m a dead tree you must be a freshly planted field.” he said, tilting his head back in an unnatural angle. There was something familiar about the way the man in all black carried himself, but Yasuke did not notice it yet.  
  
_In other words you’re an adult and I’m a child. Well congrats, you’re the first adult in this book. Wait no life’s not a book damnit Ajimu and Junko now you have me doing it too._ “Well, if you need something at this academy you’ll probably have to consult with Sakakura, or Jin.”  
  
“It’s no use pretending to be polite. You’re rude and kind, so basically you’re contradicting yourself.” With his hands and his pockets, he continued to stare up at the sky. “But any kindness is wasted on me and I’m not particular business at this school. However, I’d heard that the Tsurubami child lived here. I haven’t anything to do here, but I thought i might take a look. That’s all.”  
  
“Tsurubami…? “  
  
The wind changed. Suddenly just then Matsuda caught notice what Kaiki was staring at. There seemed to be a whole flock of crows sitting on the hope’s peak building they were standing at the edge of. Not a single one of them so much as fidgeted or made a noise, as if they were waiting in anticipation of something.  
  
“But I’ve wasted my time. The daughter of Hato Tsurubami doesn’t seem to be around, and there’s no money to be made.There’s a strange aura about this school too, ti seems like it’s cursed, or maybe someone cursed is in attendance here. Hmm… it feels familiar…”  
  
_Aura?_ _  
_ _Is this…_  
Matsuda speculated in horror.  
_An Adult Chuunibiyou?_

He hoped the first adult he had seen in a long time would not turn out to be like that, but he had no expectations towards life whatsoever.

“The lesson for me here is that even if the truth is as one suspects, it amy still be worthless.” A sudden wind picked up as he walked away. He disappeared into the red light, walking directly into the sun. Matsuda guessed that meant he was not actually a vampire.  
  
"I'm not really interested in any lessons can give me."  
  
"Are you the type to assume he's always the smartest in the room?"  
  
"Well yeah, they wouldn't have invited me to this academy to use me if I wasn't."  
  
"Then our types are destined to clash. Those who always assume they have everyone dancing in their palms can never coexist, because they don't want to share."  
  
"Then, why are you still talking to me? You're just a boring adult," Matsuda felt like Junko as those lines left his lips. He really wanted to be left alone.   
  
"I thought this series was famous for its banter. You seem like a sharp tongued youth."   
  
"Every time you call me a youth I can physically hear your spinal column breaking. Cut off the connection from the nerves in your brain to the rest of your body and die, please."  
  
Kaiki merely laughed to himself and walked off. "You do know how to be polite after all..." 

His laughter sounded like the cawing of crows.   
The moment he left, the birds he had been watching started to make noise, a murder of crows cackled all at once. The wind change,d and the twin tails of his long black jacket billowed behind him. As he saw the man’s pitch black silhouette disappear, Matsuda’s memory was finally jolted.  
  
_A dead tree._ _  
_ _A  pitch black existence._ _  
_ _A laughing crow._ _  
_  
The image of Kumagawa Misogi appeared smiling in his mind. Then, Matsuda shook his head. “He’s totally different from that slacker, Kumagawa-kun. They just both have the same creepy aura.”  

  
That was the last important encounter he felt like recalling. After that the story preceded as normal. Nothing interesting happened in the real world, he simply stared at monitors while Junko and Kamukura dived in and did all the work.  
  
In a month’s time all of them had been retrieved with Kumagawa and Komaeda being the last ones. It was may, and Yasuke had already forgotten about his encounter with the strange man. Perhaps it was intuition, he felt like it was a bad idea to remember him, or get involved with him in any way.

**😈  
  
**

Yasuke had gone to check on Kumagwa Misogi in his hospital room. He had done enough calculations to determine that Kumagawa was a shithead, but from a scientific point of view his brain was near impossible to analyze.  
  
The best he could come up with is that he suffered several concussions over his lifetime. He has a great amount of scar tissue surrounding the outer edges of his brain, as well as accumulated brain damage in areas. There was also a problem where a part of his frontal lobe had been destroyed in an incident where Ikusaba Mukuro sniped him and shot him straight in the head. In other words he had suffered damage comparable to phineas gage.  
  
He doubted science could explain Kumagawa Misogi any further beyond that. Unlike Komaeda who was born with several overlapping cases of brain weird, on top of additional trauma (brainweird being the scientific term of course), Komaeda seemed to have a completely normal that had been shocked through several successive traumas.

He stopped at the door when he heard Junko’s voice on the other side of it.  
  
“Umm, I dunno. Have you tried being smarter?”

『How is that supposed to help me study? Come on Junko take this seriously I’m really trying you know!』  
  
“Oh, wait that was you trying? Umm… hey, what is this feeling? It’s like I’m feeling genuinely sorry for your existence? Is this empathy? Have I finally discovered how to emapthy?”

『Junko! I have to pass my exams in order to win and achieve my basic goal of graduating without repeating a year.』  
  
“Umm, Misogi. I know you’ve been in coma for awhile, and I have no idea whose fault that is.”

『It’s yours.』  
  
“Oh wow did you say something? Sorry I don’t speak loser.”

『Are you sure about that? If you don’t speak loser then why do you spend so much time quoting anime.』  
  
“I’m bored of that topic.”

『You just say that when you don’t have a comeback! You could let me win one of these banter matches for once.』  
  
“If I let you win, then you wouldn’t be my Misogi who always loses.”

『I have other attributes than just being a loser! I’m a fully three dimensional character!.』  
  
“Really, then what horrible attributes you’ve chosen to level up.”

『I’ve spent a lot of time in the hyperbolic time chamber! I’ve allocated my points correctly now I’m decent at some things most people don’t take seven yeas of groundhog day loops to get good at, first I’ve got a cute boyish face so plus one point.』  
  
“You’ve got the eyes of a fish at the bottom of the ocean, so that’s minus like five thousand points. Plus nobody likes people who spend all their time complimenting themselves.”

『Ummm Junko, you do that.』  
  
“Yeah, but I’m not a people I’m a Junko. I'm beyond people.”

『More like you’re Junk. Ow, ow, ow, my ear. Your nails are all pinchy. Well, I’m going to graduate from the reserve course without repeating a year, plus one..』

“Oh well I don’t know whose fault this is but you’ve actually been asleep so long you slept through all your final exams, forcing to repeat a year Minus ten thousand points.”

『No, I lost even at graduating! Wait, it’s totally your fault!』  
  
“I thought your character development was learning not to blame other people for your misfortune. Minus infinity points.”

『Nggghh, also I have a deep and protective love for my older sister Mukuro-chan.』  
  
“It sounds like she’s developing a brother complex towards you, minus square root of negative one points.”

『That’s your fault! There’s nothing abnormal about Mukuro’s sibling love, get down on your knees and apologize.』  
  
“Gosh Misogi this isn’t the bedroom, and aren’t you the one who usually gets down on his knees.”

『Damnit, I’m losing, and these points are completely arbirary. Is there anything else, I can’t think of anything.』  
  
“Are you done already, because I can think of five thousand more instances of dirt on you.”

『I only recognize my own face in filthy mud. Fine, yes one more thing I’ve finally found a dream.』  
  
“A dream?”

『You’re the one who lectured me about thinking about the future. So I’ve decided, the old saying is to work is to lose isn’t it? I don’t want to lose. Therefore, my choice to stay at home not a and not work is entirely appropriate and utterly justifiable. I’m going to marry rich and become a house husband. I spent seven long years developing my cooking skills so now I’m so confident I can out cook any seven year old in a competition. I can do pretty much all house hold chores at the level of a seven year old as well!』  
  
“The fact that you're such a prideful person somehow in spite of all this gives prideful people like me a bad name…” Enoshima Junko said with a tilt in her head. Then suddenly she bit her lip. “Wait, who are you planning to marry?”

『Hmm, dunno have to find someone as cute as I am.』

“You think you’re so funny don’t you?” At that point Enoshima Junko grabbed him by the blue hospital gown he was wearing and pulled him close.

『Of course I am, I’m a joker among jokers! A wild card among wild cards! All jokers are my friends even-』  
  
“More like your life is one big fat joke.”

『Well, I don’t mind as long as it makes you smile Junko.』

"One point..." She muttered underneath her breath. 

Staring through the crack in the doorway, Matsuda Yasuke understood the instant he saw it. Enoshima Junko’s sincere smile. The smile she had shown him the day he spent all day searching for the culprit that had destroyed her sand castle, the same smile she wore when she told him she did it to herself.  
  
They were getting along, along so naturally, leaning against each other without even realizing it as if they were two halves of the same hole, pushing and pulling back and forth, as they bantered, teased one another, and clowned around together.  
  
Matsuda heard something break behind him, a sound like the strings on a piano snapping.  
  
The reason Kumagawa Misogi had been so important to Enoshima Junko was because they were dating. Junko did not tell him, of course she did not because they had never talked.  
  
Why had she wanted to see Kumagawa again so badly?   
The answer was simple and he had spent so long overcomplicated and ruminating on it.  
If he had asked Junko she would have said this.   
_Because I love him._  
And those kind words coming out of her mouth would have hurt him far worse than the time she had stabbed him in the side.   
  
Suddenly, his space next to her was gone.  
Suddenly, the red string he had strangled himself on was cut.  
That was fine though.  
That was how he wanted to live from now on.  
Unrelated.  
Unattached.  
A loner.  
  
Matsuda Yasuke had been a lost child until Enoshima Junko found him. She was the reason that he had become found, she was the reason he had a place of belonging. Now he had nothing at all.  
  
But he thought it was better that way, to return to being a lost child, to return to being alone. That was his punishment after all.


	11. Gracefully Cruel, the One Who Picks the Flower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A durarara!! Ref this chapter.  
> Also the Kaiki scenes are pretty much his introduction scenes modified for the crossover. Expect a twist with him next chapter though.

Kumagawa Misogi let the water wash over his hair.  
Back arched, body crooked looking as usual, completely naked like the day he was born he sat on a stool in the middle of the bath. Holding the shower head to the side, he was only listening to the sound of water dripping off of him before.  
  
That earlier metaphor was a lie he probably was not born naked. He was born covered an already dirtied child. Miserable people drowned so much in their own misery they began to doubt that happiness even existed. Happy people seemed like liars, their smiles were the lies they told. Kumagawa wondered he truly wondered if innocent children were allowed to exist in this world.  
  
He once heard the story of the first man and woman alive.  
They chose to share the forbidden fruit together.  
For that they were punished.  
They would never be allowed to dwell in the garden together again.  
But they were punished together.  
  
Drip, drip, dip. Ever since he was a child he had wondered how long he would have to live, how many successive punishments he would have to endure, before he was allowed to glimpse at the garden for just a moment. His hair was drip drying, and the sound of water droplets falling off of him like rain falling on the surface of the water caused ripples and destroyed whatever image he had been focusing on.  
  
He was in the real world now, he was pretty sure. Yet, sometimes just like he had in that dream world he found himself staring into the distance, trying to catch sight of something dazzling again. Just as that inverted world had showed Komaeda’s desires to live in a world without talent, it had also show Kumagawa’s own desire. He wanted to return to the world of talent, the unfair, elitist, world that had looked down upon him time and time again, the world he thought was nothing more than a world of shadows. There was no way he could have dreamed a happy dream without Junko.

His eyes had grown weary, from seeing only ugly sights, from seeing only human ugliness, he watched the same images pass by again and again until he had gotten bored of it. A fixation emerged deep within his chest, a desire he tried to deny but each time he did the knots were pulled tighter and tighter, twisted into more complicated shapes, the strings rubbed against each other and burned. He wanted to see something beautiful.  
  
He wanted to see a beautiful garden, even tainted with original sin as he was. Even if all he could do was slither between the patches of grass and fallen leaves, and tempt deceive the woman into eating the fruit. Even if the only end result was punishment, to see it for just one moment.

A bottle of black hair dye was left opened near the edge of the tub. An inky black liquid falls into the water, and Kumagawa watched the blackness spread like wisps of pitch black smoke. Smoky water, unclean water, just like him he was glad he had told Junko he could bathe himself and Junko had scared off MIkan’s offers to help him like a hissing cat, he did not want anybody to see him like this, a creature dripping in black, like he had crawled himself up from the pitch black bottom of the ocean.

Crawling, crawling in search of something. Before he can try to peer into the water as if it was a looking glass that would show him his dreams again, Junko’s voice, high pitched and sharp as ever shatters any glass he might want to look through.  
  
“So why did your hair turn white while you were in a coma again, was that like a symbolism thing?”

『Yes, because the real world bends to the rules of symbolism, Junko.』  
  
“Well it should. For instance my chest grew so big to symbolize-”  
  
『How vast and empty it is?』  
  
“My big heart and all the dreams I carry. The dreams I want to share with the world.”

『Any dreams that you have are best kept to yourself.』Enoshima Junko had told him once how she wanted to paint the whole world in the beautiful, colorful emotion of despair she felt in her chest. He could not blame her necessarily, because to Junko it was a colorless world. He thought he might have been luckier for thinking the world was pitch black. 『My hair is naturally white, I just dye it. Don’t you think black looks cuter on me?』  
  
“You dye your hair, senpai? I can’t believe you’d change your hair to something besides it’s natural color.”  Upupupu, she snickered, he could tell she was covering her mouth. “You’re surprisingly fake.”

『Junko, you’re not a natural blonde.』  
  
“Yes, but my heart. My heart is that of a blonde.”  
  
『Another lie. You don’t have a heart. You have a toy heart at best, what business do you have calling people fake?』  
  
“I’m real, I’m a real girl, everybody’s always saying to me that girl’s for real.”

『They mean it sarcastically, like, ‘Is that girl for real?’』

“Anyway, I’m bored of that…” At the moment the high energy from her voice slipped away, slowly, as if falling. “All of this talk of fakes, how do we know if this is world is the real one? This reality where we exist together is fragile, it was created by an evil power like All Fiction that undid what should be impossible to undo. Even though you went so far as to undo the death game, it still happened anyway, maybe it was meant to happen, things were meant to come to an end like fate, just like the death game repeated. Maybe you didn't really undo the things you thought you would, maybe the things you thought you erased will come back, you can't just erase story consequences. That's bad writing, and maybe the end of the world too will-” When she got like that, she sounded as if she might fade away in any moment.

He had no idea if those were her genuine thoughts, or she was simply trying to get her nails in between the frayed, and knotted strings in his heart. 『Even if this world turns out to be all fiction, even if it ends, if we find each other again in the next world I’m sure it’ll be lots of fun.』As he spoke he walked out in a par of black boxers drying his hair. What he saw made him drop the towel on the floor.  
  
He no longer had any retorts of this situation. All words and hall breath had been stolen from him. Just for a moment the snake glimpsted the naked woman in the garden, he forgot all hatred and was simply entrance by her ethereal beauty. Such pleasure took took the serpent to behold.  
  
He had heard the sharp sounds of the two metal halves of a scissor slicing against each other earlier, _snip, snip, snip,_ and thought it was nothing more than Junko cutting up something because she was bored. She had been beheading roses it seemed. Then, she gathered the flower heads up in her chest, and carelessly flung them all over the bed. Enoshima Junko laid back waiting for him. There was nothing covering her body except the rose heads which she had laid upon it, over her chest, on her hips, some  of them on the outside curce of her elgs. She had even sewn a few roses in between the curls of her golden hair which lay flat against the pillows, still tied up into two pig tails. It looked like roses were simply floating on the surface, picked up and rolling on waves of gold. Her right hand raised, she delicately traced the contours of her chest moving the roses slightly with her fake red nails. She had even rested a single flower over the empty space that was her missing red eye. With her doll like left hand, she rubbed the inside of her thigh, and pointed at what the roses were censoring.

She looked like a corpse that had been taken over by nature and turned into a garden as seeds fell in between the cracks in her body. Yet, despite being a corpse nothing of her rotted away, and her body was able to give nutrients to the plants that grew inside of her. A corpse bloom. A beautiful corpse. She had become part of the world’s supposed beauty. The beauty he had always tried to seek out in the world after Ajimu told him the world could be both cruel and beautiful.  
  
A garden of his own. He was able to see it. That was all he thought. As words no longer held meaning. They gave over to sensations, feelings, colors, blood rushing, heart shouting in his ears and then skipping a beat to whisper. 『Ahhhhhhhhhh.』 He dragged out the syllable, rolling it on his tongue to feel it.『Junko you’re naked.』

“Oh, is that why it suddenly got so cold in here.”

『No, that chill you’re feeling is your frozen heart.』  
  
“Then why don’t you come and melt me already?”

『Did you want to take a really artsy instagram photo?』

“Is it possible for one guy to be so oblivious? Even if a girl is naked right in front of you, you don’t even bother to make a move do you? You’re just an automatic failure.”

『Hmmm, Junko is taunting me cruelly. Is there perhaps something she wants?』  
  
“Ahem. I want to see Misogi’s amazing face right now. A despair-induced face on trespassing a garden he dare not enter, of touching something he doesn’t deserve to touch, I’d like to see it more, become, more, and more, and more, and more despair-induced. The face you make when you're so hungry, right before you give way to your desire to devour.”

『Desire, huh…?』His eyes swirled around, like water mixing, mixing, reality began to mix too and he saw not only roses, but rose vines were mixed amongst Junko’s golden hair. The vines reaching out like string, entwining around him. He was always so terrible at acting on those desires recklessly, he had always denied himself, denied others, denied everything.

“I suppose it can’t be helped, oh dear.” Junko said, her red lips trembled a little bit before she flipped enitrely. “D-don’t get me wrong or anything!” She yelled out bright red with embarrassment. “I… I don’t really mind if you don’t want this kind of thing with me… Even though I’m unreliable…”

『Junko is being fake tsundere.』  
  
“Idiot, you could make the first move for once. You could take the plunge instead of having to get dragged by me.”

『Junko is being real tusndere.』Kumagawa took the step. He could deny everything, but he could not deny her. Even if denying was his very nature, even if being unattached was his nature, he always went against everything for her, he reversed his nature for her. Even if it meant trampling over the beautiful garden he would have been content to stay witness to. He climbed over the bed and pushed his mouth against hers, clumsily, overeager as always.

Kissing Junko was just a natural continuation of their conversations, a struggle, it always was, tongues wagging against each other, and she bit way too much. He stopped a moment when she bit too hard on his lip and saw that her eye was open, she was watching him as if trying to memorize every detail of his face and steal it away all for herself.

She wonders why he even bothered to cleaned himself off. Was it a religious ritual like his name? Was he trying to purify himself? There were some stains on him that would never wash off. Then she would have to try extra hard to make him dirty again. Haha, she sure did love innuendo.

Technically, this is only their second time. The rest was just far away on an island, in a dream they shared together. The thing she likes about Kumagawa is, his face and mind always looks so innocent but his body remembers. Her hand travels down to the base of his spine where she knows he’s sensitive and she jams a nail there to make his whole body freeze up, and holding himself back so tightly he starts to tremble. Every scar on his body, every time someone touched him and left a handprint, he remembers. She lets her fingers brush over them. As she does her tongue flicks back and forth behind her teeth, before she bites it hard in the corner of her mouth.  
  
She changes her mind suddenly grabs him by the shoulders and pushes him back. He’s obviously hard behind the thin cloth of the boxers, the only thing between them and sitting up on her knees she presses her palm against it, and then starts to tug at the elastic waste band demanding like a princess. The moment nothing is in their way, they embrace again, a twisting, cloying embrace, and when she does something coils up inside of her. That feeling is just impatience maybe, most likely. She breathes ice cold in his ear, “How does it feel Misogi, something so ugly getting to touch something so beautiful.”

『You used to be a lot prettier before you met me you know. Now you’ve got missing parts too, how do you feel about that?』He spits back his words into her mouth.

His emotions are so obvious, they leak out of his eyes like water, pure water. She wonders how many times she had marveled at that, his ability to feel things, simple, uncomplicated emotions, and then change between one emotion to the next like the bends of a river. If she could have such watery emotion, what would she give for that? Well she already knew that, everything she had, everything she loved, and the whole world too. He looks stupidly sad one moment, and then the next stupidly happy when she grabs his hand and puts it on her chest. He lowers his head towards it then lays a kiss, and the next moment he bites her flesh instead as if he wanted to bite into an apple.  
  
Because her chest is so sensitive that’s all, that’s why from that spot her skin felt like a sudden combustion of fire. Electricity dances underneath her skin. More, more, always wanting more, she pushes Kumagawa beneath her even further, hand on his chest as if to say down boy. Then, she changes her mind again and grabs him on both of his hips flipping him over herself. They tumble, and tumble again, always going back and forth like this neither of them able to decide, neither of them able to ever be satisfied.

Then she locks her heels right behind that spot on the base of his spine. His body is held together by spite, and stitches. Always looking like it’s on the brink of falling apart, but not yet she tells herself. It’s only fun to watch it collapse after you’ve built the tower up high, that’s the lesson she’s learned. Seeing him right down to his foundations creak with desire though, she wonders what kind of emotion she feels. Obviously, he’s enjoying this differently than she is, he feels differently than she does, more of something, and probably more twisted too. Instead of doing what comes natural when their bodies are positioned like this she waits.  
  
She cups her hand around the side of his face to study its features. Then brings hers up close, rubbing the side of her face against it. “Bristle, bristle, prickly, prickly.”  His eyes look confused. “You should let me shave your face already.”  
  
His hair has grown longer falling over his face and reaching almost to his shoulders, and there are bristles on his chin. He was dreaming for a long time, his body grew up even when his mind did not. 『Letting you near my neck with a razor seems like such a great idea.』  
  
“You should let me cut your hair too.”

『I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun with a pair of scissors near my neck too.』  
  
There’s a scar on his ear. A small place where his ear is split in two near the top. Once when cutting his hair Ajimu cut there on purpose and he never healed it, but she doesn’t want to think of her here, because only the two of them belonged in this garden. In frustration she reaches forward and bites at his ear.

『Ah, Junko-what are you?』  
  
Then she lets go, and decides to take the plunge. He’s inside of her, and she wants to push, push, push, until he’s about to break and then push some more. It feels good, she supposes, biologically sex is supposed to feel good.  
  
She watches his expression, trying so hard. Every time it happens, she forgets, for a brief moment, a terribly large and bright flash of light that she was supposed to be a girl who feels nothing. It’s suddenly like ecstasy is all she’s ever felt. Like a lifetime of happiness her throat was too dry to laugh over, sadness she was too frozen to shed even a single tear, could be contained and made up for in that single moment. She feels so muchs he wants to laugh and cry all at once.  
  
Then it’s over with. Things have to end, that’s what makes them interesting. She reminds herself while still feeling frustrated, grasping at her now empty feeling stomach. He’s lying next to her, completely out of breath. He’s bad at this so he has to try harder than anyone.  
  
Because she could have anyone she wanted, anyone in the whole world.  
However, there’s no one in the world that loves Kumagawa Misogi.  
No one except for humankind’s most selfish girl.

“Your love is icky, Misogi.” She reminds him.  
  
All he does is laugh. 『Thank you. So is yours.』  
  
Then she rolls on her side, back against his. Suddenly not wanting to look for some reason even though she’s been observing him so hungrily the whole time. For her, sex was less about the biological components as it was about hyping herself to feel something, that’s why they talked as they moved, that’s why she had to taunt him so. So, what did she feel now?  “Misogi I think I’m dying.”

『Oh, and why is that?』  
  
“My face is all flushed, my heart is beating out of my chest and I feel like I’m going to collapse.”  
  
『Awwwe, Junko had an emotion.』  
  
Junko thought she was the only one watching him, but he sneaked a glance at her. Just for a moment her moments melted over in lust, her lip pulled tight, her eyes twisting up, a completely natural face she made all on her own. It only lasted for a second before she gained total control of the situation again. But it was proof that she was a human too. He would lock it away deep inside himself, tuck it so far amongst the pages that nobody would think to flip through them to look.

He just wants to dwell in that garden. Even if it’s forbidden territory, even if he has to trespass or steal to gain entry. Everybody hid something from the world, everybody had their own hidden garden, and Enoshima Junko’s was more tightly guarded than most. She herself probably did not even dwell much within it, because she was such an empty girl and yet…  
  
Even if that garden was just a garden of thorns in the end. He wanted to get close enough to see it. He wondered, turning his head around to see that he had grabbed onto her one hand and intwined their fingers, and that they were still connected at their hands even looking away from each other. Did they manage to steal away inside each other’s gardens? How close did they get this time? Did their bodies overlap? Her fingers suddenly tightened and her nails dug into his flesh.  He wonders if she asks the same questions too. The questions keep coming and he’s too stupid to ask them, so slowly in the warmth the two of them are temporarily able to share he dozes off.  
  
She reached forward picking flower petals away from his hair between two nails. Kumagawa just wanted to see the garden, but she wanted to steal something away from it. Gracefully cruel, the one who picks the flower, that was Enoshima Junko.  


**😈**

 

I hate being a narrator.  I held back all that bitter cynicism of mine, see I can have the heart of a romanticist after all.

I have a heart of gold. Really. It’s just the kind of gold bars that they bury in concrete several stories beneath the earth. There are ten foot high fences, electrified with barbed wire, and snipers at every tower. That’s how well my pure gold heart is guarded.  
  
I’m impenetrable basically. Nothing is getting inside. Nothing can penetrate. I’m unfuckable. I can’t be fucked! That’s the power of a loner! Wait, why the hell am I bragging about this? Anyway.

Enoshima Junko dreamed unpleasantly. Normally she would love such dreams but, not when it inconvenienced or caused trouble for her. At least not the kind of trouble she enjoyed. Inconvenience was not necessarily despair, in fact it could test the patience of someone who was legendarily impatient.  
  
She preferred much more vastly to inconvenience for others, source: Me. She had a tendency to watch the traumatic nightmares that shook Kumagawa in his sleep, and would cover her mouth to suppress her giggles when he looked particularly terrified to prevent herself from waking her up. Because that’s not creepy or anything.  
  
As far as I’m concerned she’s the yandere stalker not me. Compared to her I’m not the worst person ever. Yay, progress on my self esteem.  
  
However, she had not been able to watch him sleep tonight as she had fallen asleep first. In her dream, she was holding a blanket on her head, trying to make herself look as small as possible as if to hide away from something. She was sitting in an entirely empty classroom and she heard loud voices coming from the direction she was hiding her head from.  
  
_Thinking of the future, huh? Of growing up?_ _  
_ _When for the longest time all I’ve done is hesitate like a small child._ _  
_ _But, what is there for me to be afraid of?_

Kumagawa’s voice echoed in her head again.

『Why do you keep living this?』  
  
“Because it’s my life’s work.”

He always had to be the one to call out to her. It was so annoying.  
  
『Why have you been doing this your whole life?』  
  
“It’s all I know how to do."  
  
Kumagawa Misogi stood over her. He pulled the blanket away, and she was unable to hide. She turned around and saw who was arguing.

What had she been doing her whole life?  
Despair, of course.  
  
Sixteen other students were arguing, they wore plastic masks with cartoonish versions of her face on it. Enoshima Junko lived in despair, and for the longest time that was all she knew about herself that was all she needed to know about herself. There was no real Enoshima Junko, even as she was constantly changing her mind and changing her personality, because every single iteration of her at the same time was the real Enoshima Junko.  
  
Haughty, In your face Rude, Cute, Depressed, Cold and Analytical Megane type, they were all her. They were all deliberate acts put on her, masks she could switch between in a moment. She was everywhere and nowhere on the stage. However while she had perfect self control, she had never really bothered to look at the self. She had been so focused on planning her eventual destruction and the destruction of everything else.  
  
Before she knew it. Like gathering petals in her hand before the wind changed and blew them away. They had scattered too fast before she could collect them. They had slipped through her finger tips. They, they, no they were her. She thought she had never cared about herself, she found that thing called self identity tedious and boring but also it was probably the opposite case she cared too much about herself. She only saw herself.  
  
When she so carefully broke others, she manipulated them carefully, pushing them further and further underwater until they forgot how to see light. Until they had forgotten what light was like, even forgetting the memories in the past when they had saw it. When they were down that low, when they were sunk in their own misery they became more like her. They mistakenly thought they could only feel despair, as hurt, as wounded as their senses was, so caught up in the cycle of trauma, they hurt others as they were hurt, they lashed out mistaking the pained smiles they were giving for pleasure.

No, that’s not right. I’m going to disagree with Enoshima Junko’s inner monologue, that’s the sane thing to do. It was just her twisted self love that’s all, she’s making it sound like she reprogrammed their brains into a negative feedback loop of despair through trauma alone.  
  
Self love, focused on herself, she pushed others into the same level of despair as her and saw how it manifested in them. Tsumiki Mikan saw love as synonymous with despair, Nagito Koameda saw falling to despair as justifiable for hope, Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko saw killing everybody else before they killed him as justifiable, fighting a war with the whole world to protect Pekoyama, and Pekoyama too feared if she stopped fighting she could no longer be a tool to him. However, everyone’s despair manifested differently than her own, they always kept their own personal reasons.

She could not see any of herself. She could not see herself in their despair, and in the end she only cared about herself so she stopped working on that long project she had engaged in to cultivate in. She lost all interest.  
  
Others should be bored like she was. Others should be empty like she was. Others should despair like she was. Everybody else was staring up and reaching towards a light but if she looked at the sky she saw nothing at all.  
  
Enoshima Junko turned around not caring about the squabbling, her mind was chaotic enough as it was already. She stared at the window and saw her only reflection back, only hear the sound of shattering glass and see a rock thrown through it. The reflection split as cracks spread along the glass.  
  
“What do you feel right now?” A voice asked her.  
  
“Despair.”  
  
“That’s a lie.”  
  
The voice asked the Junko reflections.  
“What you feel right now is.”  
  
Enoshima Junko reflected in the glass held clutched her face, and held two fingers to her temple glaring with sharp eyes. “You are an imbecile.”  
  
EMPTY.  
“No that’s not me I’d never be so boring.”  
  
A cute ENoshima Junko with large round eyes, blushing profuesly at her cheeks pointed forward.  “Boy cooties, ewe!”  
  
BOREDOM.

“No that’s not me I’d never be so boring.”

  
A regal Enoshima Junko stood with her hands on her hips, a crown on her head as she glared down at others. “You will bow down before me!”  
  
ALONE.  
  
A rude ENoshima Junko stuck her tongue out, screamed until her face was red and crossed her arms sticking out her index, thumb, and pink fingers. “Who you trying to scare?”  
  
BORED.  
BORED.  
BORED.  
  
A cold Enoshima Junko adjusted her glasses, changing her pig tails to one pony tail as she held a clipboard in another hand. “Death awaits you all.”  
  
“What I feel now is…” The real Enoshima Junko muttered.  
BOREDOM.  
  
Monokua’s face, half good, half evil, half white, half black, its left eye reddened and twisted, “How he despises it precious.”     
  
“What I feel is…”  
  
She paused before continuing.

“Despar will make me feel things…”  
  
『That’s a lie isn’t it.』  
  
Lies were destined to become unraveled twisted. It was because she had found somebody who could despair as similarly as she could, who thrashed around wildly like she did, that she finally started to look at herself and she reached this conclusion.  
  
“I am...”  
  
BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED.  
LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME. LAME.  
  
“Despair is…”

N - O - T - H - I - N - G.

Enoshima Junko’s eyes shot open. Before she even knew it she was wide awake. Kumagawa Misogi had somehow in his sleep moved to throw his limbs over her, like one of those huge dogs that slept taking up the entire bed.  
  
“Really, you’re way too spoiled for a pet. Dogs belong on the floor.” She said, before kicking him off with one sharp kick.  
  
Kumagawa woke up in an instant too, though his eyes were wide and half lidded with sleep.

『Junko’s in a good mood this morning, how fun.』

Suddenly, he had no personal space, or rather he was not allowed any as she was standing above him leaning over to meet his face as he sat up. “Misogi I need you to do something iteresting.”

『Should I do a trick…?』  
  
“How about a distraction…” Her eyes were distant for a moment. Even to Kumagawa Junko was unreadable at times, more times than he would have liked. “That island, Jabberwock island. Tell me something miserable that happened there.”

『I… I don’t want to think about it.』  
  
“That’s not like you. Since when are you so bothered by trauma, you happily recounted to me pretty much every incident behind those scars on your body.”

『Junko, can we talk about it later? We were having a lot of fun the past few days and getting along better than we normally do.』  
  
“Yeah, and I was putting up with the terrible boredom of that because I thought you might be able to tell me something interest. Come on, what was being on those islands like? What kind of despair were you feeling?”

『You weren’t so you were just… pretending… to get something out of me.』Kumagawa did not smile at this. His expresion soured, but before he could say anything else.  
  
“Come on Misogi, I’ll listen to you. Despair rehabiliation. You’ve got to face all your despair head on right?”

『Junko, why do you suddenly want to know so badly?』  
  
“I… I…” She gripped her forehead suddenly, a sharp piercing headache, she heard the sound of splintering glass again. Impuslively, rashly, she brought her foot up into his chest and pushed him back. “It doesn’t matter, it’s tedious playing comedy duo with you, if you’re not going to give me what I want.”

『Junko I don’t even know what you want. Is something wrong? Junko, you’re shaking. Even though you’re standing in front of me, you look like you’re about to run away… 』He stood up and held out an arm towards her.  
  
That she immediately grabbed and flipped him forward back into the bed easily, shoving his face against the mattress. “Do you think I’m a crying little girl that needs to be held and comforted? That won’t do anything for me. That’s just lame, lame, lame. Occasionally I might pretend to be somebody who needs to be held by you but that loses its interest pretty fast.”  
  
She said as cutting as ever, Kumagawa merely kept his eyes fixed on her even as his head was being bent around. 『Junko, if you won’t let me talk to you, if you won’t let me touch you, what am I supposed to do?』  
  
“Just do something interesting, fix… you were supposed to fix…” Her voice fell into a whisper suddenly as she started to mutter to herself again. “That’s why I spent so much time getting you, mine, my real thing, my interesting thing… that’s why…”

『Junko, I’m not a thing and I...』She heard the joint of an elbow popping out and suddenly, Kumagawa was twisting his body around and she was the one being pushed down on the bed. He had her by the next his other arm hanging limp at his side, but all he did was stare down at her. 『I knew this was going to happen, you’d just go back to what you did  earlier. It’s always like this… the lesson to be learned here is people dull to pain keep hurting me.』  
  
She saw the dejected look in his eyes. The same one he wore when he wished to keep sleeping to avoid pain.

『I don’t have to put up with this, Junko. If your only intention was to play with me as a toy until I break, I can just disappear, somewhere where even you can’t find me. That was my only plan from the beginning...』Kumagawa glared at her. He really did not understand, because Enoshima Junko could not be said to be like him, who had no parents, who had lived and slept in garbage, hidden in alleyways, who was abandoned and passed on responsibility from adult to adult, who was kicked out of middle school and never stayed at one high school for more than a month until now. 『You’re the one who made me think about the future, so take responsibility and grow up already.』  
  
“I’m trying! You’re the one who doesn’t want to talk about things! You’re the one who has that boring ‘I’m going to lose so what does it matter” look on his face. Don’t talk to me about growing up!.” She spat back, digging her claws into his hand. Kumagawa let go far too easily. She got in his face and yelled. “Stunted child.”

『Brat.』  
  
“Good for nothing.”

『Better than a girl who has nothing inside her.』  
  
“Y… you’re empty too, shut up!”  
  
Hearing Kumagawa’s face echoing in her dream again, still shaking her back strengthened with pride like a sudden bolt clearing up all the twisted nerves in her spine that were misfiring anxious signals. She grabbed Kumagawa’s jacket off the floor, stole it, threw it on over her underwear and bolted out of the room stomping loudly down the whole hallway so Kumagawa would know exactly how mad she was.

Kumagawa collapsed back on the bed. He stared forward with empty eyes for a moment, before he processed what had just happened. Then he tilted his head to the side.『Oh, I see. Junko and I had our first fight as a couple.』  
  
It took him a moment to register what was normal. At that moment Yasuke Matsuda happened to  walk down the hallway. Enoshima Junko was the last person he wanted to see at the moment, so the universe decided to punish him. She brushed by him quickly, not even noticing, but Matsuda saw black and red polka dots.  
  
Being a narrator was not so bad after all.

Flustered, he turned the corner to see Kumagawa MIsogi sitting on the edge of his bed not wearing any pants.  
  
Nevermind, being the narrator was back to being the worst.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi merely smiled as he always did. 『Yasuke-chan, you pervert!』  
  
“I’m not continuing this conversation. I refuse until we’re wearing an equal amount of clothing.”

『I guess there’s no helping it. You’ll have to take your pants off too.』  
  
Yasuke was in fact, a brain surgeon but it did not take a brain surgeon to figure out what had happened. Enoshima Junko had demanded something out of Kumagawa that he could not give her, and because Enoshima was completely unused to people showing any kind of spine around her she had thrown a tantrum about it. Now she was upset, and hurt, and running away.  
  
Good it’s what she deserves, was what Yasuke wanted to think. Unfortunately, having a heart of gold was not as strong as it sounded after all. Gold was a metal that was far too soft and melted easily. “She doesn’t need me now, she needs you.”

『She doesn’t need anyone.』  
  
“Yeah, whatever let’s just pretend she’s not the most neediest bitch on earth. She needs you, so get your act together.”

『Are we putting on a play?』

“I’m serious! If you screw things up with her…” He reached his hand into the pocket of his coat, fingers closing around a scalpel. There was a scar on his hand from where Soshun had struggled against him. When he wrapped his hands tightly around Kumagawa Misogi’s neck, Kumagawa had barely struggled at all in comparison. “I’ll kill you.”

『Well, I don’t want to die because that would make Yasuke-chan cry.』  
  
“Crying like you would be like crying over rotten spilt milk.”

『How do you spill milk when it rots doesn’t it turn into a solid?』  
  
“Why are you nitpicking my metaphors! I just wanted to call you rotten, you damn zombie!”

『Hey now, Yasuke-chan. I won’t have you insult the whole of zombie kind by comparing them to me. What if a zombie were to show up and become a regular character in this work then you’d already be on a bad foot for insulting them.』  
  
“No zombies are going to show up, stop recklessly foreshadowing like that!”

『Hey Yasuke-chan why do you keep coming to check on me, are you a masochist?』  
  
“No, that’s you shitriver.”

『Then are you a stalker?』  
  
“Why are all of these guesses under the assumption that I like you? That’s the far worse insult here.”

『Oh, you don’t?』Kumagawa kicked his feet innocently, as if he was a child getting disappointed and stared down sheepishly at his toes. 『So you’re saying you don’t want to be friends?』  
  
“You really don’t have any friends, huh? Especially if you’re asking me of all people.”

『What is the true meaning of friendship to you?』  
  
“Nevermind, only someone who has no friends would dodge the question like that.”

『Anyway, you must have a lot of free time if you keep showing up to both me at times like this. I guess that makes sense since you’ve lost most of your motivation.』  
  
“I don’t even want to know what you think my motivation is.”

『Well, most of it is Junko’s boobs, right?』  
  
“I said I don’t want to know!”

『The rest of it is my hot, curvy body!』Kumagawa said striking a pose in front of Yasuke.

Yasuke let go of the scalpel in his jacket pocket because if he did not he was pretty sure that he was going to jam it in his eyes. “Where is your body hot and curvy? All I see is what looks like a poor starving child. Child, are you okay? Do you need a loaf of bread?”

『I’m a year older than you! Why does everybody keep calling me childish!』  
  
“Huh? Were you talking to me? Every time words leave your mouth all I keep thinking is no human being would ever say that.” Matsuda realized that in their conversation he had sat next to Kumagawa on the edge of his bed without even realizing it. It was just the two of them in the basement of the neurology building where they had set up a room for Kumagawa to stay before he was ready to return to the academy.  
  
In dark shadowy places like this where nobody could see the, anything could happen. Kumagawa put a hand on the bed over Yasuke’s and leaned forward staring into his eyes.『But anyway, Yauske-chan. I’m dating Junko, and I love Mukuro as a sister, but I plan to marry you. 』  
  
As he drifted closer, Yasuke immediately grabbed the side of Kumagawa’s face and pushed it away. “Please don’t be the first person to propose to me! I don’t want my love life to be more cursed than it already is!”

『No luck, huh?』 Kumagawa said pursing his lips to pout. 『You’ve got such a weak personality, Yasuke-chan. You get riled up so easily.』  
  
“Stop criticizing me, no matter what you say you’re not going to outdo my biggest critic. Me.”

『I’ve lost before I started, huh? You know Yasuke-chan, you and Ryoko-chan were the first people I met at this academy. As we tried to protect Ryoko-chan together, didn’t our young love blossom?』  
  
“I literally murdered you! The only flowers that blossomed were spider lilies, the flower of blood!”

『There’s that weak personality again, but that’s fine. Yasuke-chan, you’re fine staying weak.』He reached forward taking Yasuke’s hand in both of his. 『Because I’ll protect you.』  
  
It was just the Junko side of Kumagawa showing. Kumagawa Misogi was empty on the inside, formless, he could take whatever shape he wanted. He lacked that thing that everybody else had, personality, ego, whatever you want to call it he had lacked the formative years every one else had to develop one naturally. He shifted between masks. However, some of his masks were unique. He had a habit of tearing off girl’s faces, Ajimu, and then Junko next, and after he did that he picked up some of their personality traits as if he was mimicking them, carrying on in their place.  
  
He was just messing with him the same way Junko would in this situation. That's what Yasuke thought at the moment at least. Perhaps he was just repressing the idea that Kumagawa could have genuine feelings for him because that itself was horrifying to consider. Kumagawa MIsogi really was like Junko’s male other half. It was annoying. Really, she should have met him when she was two years old, and built that damn sand castle with him. It seemed like every bit of time he had spent with her up until this exact moment was pointless.  
  
Kumagawa’s one true talent, making everything pointless. “I came down here because Naegi wants to see you.”

『Oh, let’s go visit my dear Makoto-chan right away.』  
  
“Put some pants on first!”

 

**😈**

 

  
Kumagawa Misogi and Yasuke Matsuda emerged from the neuroscience building and tried to avoid the loud sounds of the parade members just outside the gate.  
  
Oh, they had given it a stupider name than the parade this time around. The massive data leaks caused by Enoshima Junko had started off a second round of protests. It was like the parade had never left it.  
  
However, this time the protests were about the ethicality of using children as testing subjects. The parade had dubbed themselves the Ultimate Hunt. As a part of the research side of the school, and a certified mad scientist who had participated in human experimentation himself Yasuke did his best to ignore them, and his conscience. Too bad he could not surgically remove that, he was a failure of a brain surgeon after all.

Listen, walking alongside and forcing himself to continue chatting with Kumagawa Misogi was punishment enough.  
  
The mob could stampede on him later if they wanted but he had a job to do now. He opened the door to the student council building and saw Mukuro waiting outside Naegi’s office. Kumagawa and her embraced, but Yasuke was maxing out his exposure to human contact and affection for the day so he looked away from such a sappy scene.  
  
After the data leak, Naegi Makoto the student council president and Hitoyoshi Zenkichi his co-president had saw the warning signs that appeared the first time the tower of the academy started to crumble and decided to fight it head on.  
  
Naegi was the one who inspired others, while Zenkichi was the muscle who disciplined following in his shadow. Zenkichi was like an enforcer to Naegi’s lofty ideals. Apparently, when Sandbox Academy was still standing before Kamukura Izuru had blown it up (that was probably also his fault as he created Kamukura Izuru) there was human experimentation going on there as well but it was stopped by the student council just beating everyone involved in it up.  
  
Yasuke was a little bit glad that had happened with the Kamukura project. He had a soft and feminine face, he did not want to see it pulverized into the concrete. And if he had been stopped before committing all those atrocities what would he be doing now?  
  
Enjoying his high school life?  
Befriending his classmates?  
Not walking around everyday with more guilt on his shoulders than he could carry alone yet insisting he do it alone anyway because he did not think he deserved to be helped?  
Pass.

However, Zenkichi had disappeared inside the Neo-World Program (read: his fault), and since then his muscle was Ikusaba Mukuro. The girl who had once tried to destroy the academy now fought in the shadows every day to save it. Ever since becoming class president, Naegi Makoto had started to wear a black suit every day. He was probably trying to look like somebody people respected, though most did not respect him anyway.  
  
He would probably earn more respect if he did not keep insisting on having Togami as a right hand man.  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro as well had stopped wearing the simple white button up shirt and skirt that she used to wear, and changed to a black blazer, black skirt, and black boots. They were basically matching as a couple, Yasuke guessed this was the thing called mutual love. How revolting.  
  
As a loner he was living a much better life now. In the past he tried to give all of his love, all of his reason for living to Enoshima Junko and she had stomped on it. Literally. Into squishy bits. Now that the only person he had was himself, that meant he had no choice but to love himself. It was a win for self love!

Anyway, Kumagawa had gone into the office and Ikusaba Mukuro was staring at him. “Matsuda-kun, your tie is crooked.”  
  
“I need to wear it that way to give others a warning sign about my crooked personality.”  
  
“Oh, um, I thought you just didn’t know how to tie it.”  
  
“Well, that too. That sounds far less impressive though.”  
  
He closed his eyes for a moemnt, and when he opened them he Ikusaba Mukuro was reaching towards his neck, and had closed the distance between them. Oh, had Junko ordered her sister to snap his neck and get it over with. Well, there was no helping that.  
  
Frustratingly, she was not trying to kill him after all. Instead, Mukuro started to fiddle with the knot of his tie. “Misogi-chan doesn’t know how to tie his either.”

“Don’t compare me to that guy. Are you trying to give me some kind of complex?”  
  
“I don’t know about stuff like that. You’re the brain surgeon not me, Matsuda-kun.” She moved on from his tie and straightened out his collar instead. “Have you been sleeping a lot lately? Your eyes are all sunken in, and they look heavy.”  
  
“Everything’s fuckin heavy…” Yasuke muttered, before glaring back at her. “What’s with you? Junko’s not around for you to babysit anymore, so you gotta find somebody else to nag?”  
  
“You know, we grew up together there’s no need to be so distant.”  
  
“I’m not distant, you are…” The Ikusaba Mukuro he knew was always staring out windows, imagining herself on some faraway battlefield. There were times she was bullied in school but after she stopped showing her timidtiy on her face and grew cold instead, she took care of bullies by simply singling out the strongest leader and beating them up. One time in middle school he saw her leap across the room, run on the desks, tackle a girl and then use push pins to interrogate her for information. Ikusaba Mukuro made not a single friend in primary and middle school, then disappeared to join a terrorist cell. An utterly unreachable person. Unless it was her sister that was reaching out for her.  
  
Now that girl was holding a hand towards him. He looked down and saw her hands. “You’re not wearing gloves…?”  
  
“Makoto says I don’t need to wear them when I’m not fighting.”

  
Even if it left the tattoo on her hand exposed. The thing that marked her a soldier first and a human being second. She was right they had grown up together why did he know so little about her. All he could tell now was that love had strengthened Ikusaba Mukuro.  
  
However his love had rendered him, his intensity as a human being… “So damn weak.” He muttered pushing her hands away from fixing his collar.  
  
“Is something wrong Matsuda-kun?”  
  
Before he could answer, Mukuro heard a scream of pain from the other side of the door.  
  
“That damn shitriver!” Yasuke said throwing open the door. His protective instincts were flaring. Naegi Makoto, the human kitten seems to produce pheromones that made other people want to protect his innocence. That was the only way that Yasuke could surmise that he attracted so many strong people to protect him, Kirigiri, Hitoyoshi, and now Mukuro.  
  
When they opened the door however, it was Makoto holding a letter opener that he had stabbed right into the middle of Kumagawa’s hand.  
  
Rewinding time a bit.  
  
『So what did you want to talk to me about?』  
  
“Are you going to come back to the academy soon, Kumagawa-senpai?” Makoto said, holding a letter opener in his hand that he had borrowed from Shuichi, as he opened the several public complaint letters that had been shoved into their request box.  
  
It seemed that there were people in the world that could send hate letters to even Naegi Makoto. For some reason, Kumagawa was suddenly possessed with the desire to go out into the world and destroy those people before Makoto ever saw them in order to protect him from the all too cruel world. Then suddenly he snapped back to normal. 『Izuru-chan says I should finish my rehabilitation first. I think he’s getting fussy over Nagito-chan as his way of being overprotective but I’m not sure why he’s fussing over me, I’m not his boyfriend.』  
  
“You don’t really ever conceptualize that people might care about you, don’t you?” Makoto said, in his trademark disarmingly honest way.

『What about you? The academy is a lot different from how it was when we first met. You’re even a second year now.』  
  
“Yeah, I’ve thought long and hard about it myself, but the current hope’s peak is not right. It’s not the one that I imagined when I first stood on the footsteps of this school.”

『Makoto-chan, it’s not just Mukuro-chan supporting you. I also… just want to continue going to this school with everybody else.』  
  
“Yeah, I know that’s what I want too. Oh, there’s one more thing I want you to do before you come back.” He said, pushing a paper across the desk for Kumagawa to see.

『Huh?』

Suddenly.  
Without even changing the expression on his face, Naegi Makoto slammed the letter opener down, piercing all the way through the center of Kumagawa’s hand and then pushed it through even further until it sunk in the wood of the desk.  
  
Kumagawa Immediately screamed out in shock. Despite the fact that he claimed to have endured every pain before this, a minor wound on his hand had him trembling. Ikusaba Mukuro immediately slamed open the door, but before she could even move Kumagawa regained his composure.  
  
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ikusaba said through her teeth.

Kumagawa simply waved her off with a smile before turning to Makoto. 『Giving me a kiss on the hand… what exactly… are you doing Makoto…chan...』

“If it had been you trapped on that island, and put at risk I would have forgiven you easily. However, no matter what you reason was you dragged Mukuro into it. I’ve thought about how we could still remain friends after this, and this is my answer to that. Let me get angry at you for a moment, after this we’ll make up.”

『That’s fine...』  
  
“Misogi-chan.” Mukuro whispered behind him.  
  
『No, that’s not fine, I don’t like getting stabbed. Especially not by you.』Kumagawa easily batted Makoto’s hand, and by himself ripped the letter opener out sending it spinning across the desk. 『Makoto-chan, what’s wrong? You’re suddenly acting very Komaeda today.』  
  
Off in the distance, Komaeda felt like he was not the one being on the darker end of the foil stick today. The feeling was liberating.  
  
“Oh, you’re upst at me! I’m so glad! If you had forgiven me then this couldn’t be a fight between friends!” There were times Makoto occasionally sounded like a space alien in his rantings about friendship and hope and this was one of them. “You know, if it was anybody else I would have forgiven you too because you’re clearly sorry but… Mukuro-chan my feelings are… I want to protect her. That’s stupid right, a weak guy like me protecting her.”  
  
『I don’t think it’s stupid. Well, if it is stupid, the stupid me feels the same way at least.』  
  
“Everybody looks at me like I’m some kind of main character, like I’m Medaka-chan. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about that. If I were in the killing game, a place with rules, I think even then I’d be able to survive but I don’t know anymore. When there are no rules, you have to rely on power to get what you want, I don’t know what people see in a powerless guy like me.”  
  
Naegi Makoto.  
He had changed just a little bit, he did not seem like the leader type. He was more like a second man, a sidekick to a darker kind of hero, but everybody had suddenly been putting that expectation of him.

“I’m useless, I just keep thinking if only I could fight like you, Mukuro, Zenkichi…”

『Makoto-chan listen. I know you think not being able to fight or use violence makes you weak, but the fact that you’re able to resolve things without violence is what makes you so strong. Stronger than the weak me.』Kumagawa stared at the hole in his hand. All he knew was violence. 『What you think makes you useless, that you hesitate, that you trust too easily, that you don’t give up even though you have no reason to be confident, is exactly what makes you strong. Don’t throw that part away, that’s what makes us all follow you. That’s what makes you win.』  
  
“It’s not easy you know, being the dumbass who stumbles his way into things cluelessly.”

『Oh, trust me do I know that.』Kumagawa said as he reached forward and slicked back Makoto’s hair with his still bleeding hand. 『I won’t make this cut into nothing. I hope it turns into a cool scar as a memory of our fight. So, listen to me and let me be a good senpai for once.』  
  
Makoto covered his eyes. “Gosh, you’re going to get an infection. You should be more careful, Kumagawa-senpai. Do you want me to clean it up for you?” The strange flash he had seen in Makoto’s eyes was gone, and he was back to being his normal self. In a weak voice, he pleaded for Kumagawa to seek medical attention.

  
Togami finally raised his head. He had been tuning out the entire conversation listening to very loud classical music on his headphones. “Hm, did something happened?”  
  
“Kumagawa got stabbed by Makoto.” Yasuke said.  
  
“Did one or both of them die?” Togami asked, sounding excited.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Damn. Missed opportunity. Then I don’t care.” He put his headphones back on and went back to ignoring them.  
  
When his hand was sewn up a moment later, him, Matsuda and Mukuro walked out.『Man it sucks to be quarreling with Makoto-chan. He’s my only friend besides Izuru-chan.』  
  
“I think you are the only person on earth who could provoke Naegi of all people into stabbin him. You must have some kind of hidden talent for this.”

『It’s not like I want to get attacked everywhere I go.』  
  
“Then why do you walk around everywhere with such a punchable face?”  
  
As the boys continued to bicker, Mukuro grabbed onto her skirt and pulled at the pleats. “I’m… I’m sorry about Makoto. That’s so unlike him.”  
  
“I don’t think even Enoshima Junko could provoke him into stabbing her.” Yasuke said, still wanting to rib Kumagawa a little further.

『Oh, that’s true.』Kumagawa ruined it by responding seriously.『I think it’s a matter of distance. Makoto is a person who likes and gets along with everybody, right? Isn’t that the same though as not liking anybody in particular. I don’t think he’s used to getting close to a person as he is to you. 』  
  
“He keeps saying he wants to protect me in some way, even though he knows he’s weak.”

『Well, what he probably wants to protect is your feelings. So that you’ll be able to keep going to this school you love as a normal girl. Honestly, the fact that he was able to feel anger towards me at all as an individual is interesting...』Kumagawa stared at the stitched up mark in the center of his hand. 『It’s probably because he can’t help but see me as an individual too. Everybody else, Makoto-chan gets flustered but he tends to be overly forgiving. I think it’s just because he can’t muster up any anger. Except for Enoshima Junko, but he probably dislikes her from an equal distance as well. Yeah this is interesting he’s getting close enough finally to hurt others. Ah, sorry Mukuro-chan did you want to say something?』  
  
Kumagawa was broken from his ramblings by the worried look on Mukuro’s face. “It’s probably the incidents that are happening lately. A bunch of fights are breaking out, and people aren’t getting along well.. And it’s my fault.”

『No, it’s probably my fault Mukuro-chan.』  
  
“No, I mean. There’s a website that’s selling a bunch of black mail, and dirty secrets that the academy gathered, and there’s a person brokering that information.”

『Orihara Izaya-chan?』  
  
“This isn’t Durarara. You see though, all that information is just the same black mail I collected for Junko back in the day when we were trying to destroy this school. We just… um… sort of left it lying around and somebody else stole it and repurposed it.”

『The good old days.』  
  
“They weren’t that good!” Yasuke snapped in the background. He was the most reliable source in this conversation.  
  
Mukuro pulled her gloves out and onto her hand. “Well, I’m going to put a stop to it now. Akoto-chan doesn’t know, but I tracked the seller down and arranged to meet with him.”  
  
Kumagawa reached forward and patted her on the head. 『Good job Mukuro-chan! Mukuro-chan’s so smart! So proactive too unlike her lazy spoiled younger sister.』

Mukuro nodded full of determination. WIth that, she left the two of them in the dust. Yasuke stayed quiet for a long time. However, Kumagawa was somehow more annoying silent than he was talking. No, Yasuke did not want to talk to him, he’s not just making excuses, shut up. Finally, he reached for his tie and made sure to untie the knot Mukuro had fixed for him until it was a messy knot again.  
  
“Do you ever get jealous of guys like Naegi?”

『Why would I? I’m taller than him?』  
  
“Naegi  and Mukuro, right now they’re acting like the heroes of this world. Meanwhile we’re still sitting here as the zeroes.”

『Well, Nagito-chan has gotten jealous of Makoto-chan in the past I know that but as for me… no, not really.』Kumagawa Misogi smiled, and for a moment even Yasuke believed the innocence of that smile. 『It’s all of Makoto-chan’s good traits that help him make my beloved sister so happy. How could I hate someone who makes her happy?』  
  
Kumagawa Misogi was a petty existence. Yet it seemed he ahd lost again in his pettiness match against Matsuda Yasuke. Not knowing what to think about that, he continued to stew silently as he walked back to the neurology building with Kumagawa walking slightly ahead of him. As, keeping everything inside his head was obviously the most mentally healthy way to deal with his problems. Shut up, I’m a neurologist.

“Are you sure you don’t resent him even a little bit?”

『Well, I don’t like that he stabbed me.』  
  
“He should have stabbed me.”

『Then, I’ll consider this stab wound an injury from protecting you, Yasuke-chan!』  
  
“If you don’t shut up I’m going to stab your other hand so you can match.”

『Then I’ll consider that an injury protecting you from yourself!』

 _Well he’s right._ _  
_ _I really do want to stab myself.  
_

**😈**

 

Let’s talk about Ikusaba Mukuro for awhile. Focus on somebody capable of saving others for once, rather than the two idiots who destroy themselves trying to.  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro had called the information broker selling academy secrets in order to further worsen the return of the parade, redubbed as the Ultimate Hunt. They met in a karaoke booth room with the curtains drawn. Junko had done almost all of her business in Karaoke rooms, or Internet Cafes the two years they worked on bringing down Hope’s Peak.  
  
Mukuro had always been worried that her sister was secretly a neet and that was why she frequented so many internet cafes. As the blinders were drawn nearly shut, extremely low amounts of light filtered into the room. The shadows had drawn so long, the room itself almost looked black and white, as if it was being presented through some old noire film grain.  
  
_Kirigiri would really get a kick out of a situation like this._ Mukuro said, thinking fondly of her fiend who had recently woken up. Ever since awakening though, Jin’s overprotectiveness as a father had gotten worse and Shuichi almost never left her side. _Perhaps he wants to protect her too, the same way Makoto wants to protect me._

“Welcome, young lady.” A man in a pitch black suit,  with his hair slicked back into two pointed ends like the ears of a cat, and skin pale to the point of looking oxygen deprived raised his head. “My name is Kaiki. Kai, like a mound of clamshells, Ki like a dead tree. What’s your name?”  
  
“Ikusaba, the kanji means ‘war blade’ and Mukuro, meaning corpse.” Mukuro said, standing tall and avoiding any of her usual shyness or social fumbling. On mission Mukuro was far different from the one that appeared in front of Kumagawa, Makoto, or her sister.  
  
“What a terrifying name. You should be a little more ungrateful to your parents.” Kaiki said, the low light of the room cast his face in shadow as he leaned forward casually. A walking shadow, was there somebody else like this Mukuro tried to piece together the strange familiarity in the air.

If it was an information broker who sold secrets to Junko in the past, Mukuro would have recognized them. Actually, they would probably be dead as Junko had a habit of using Mukuro to stick the knife in backs of anybody who trusted them. Especially boring old adults.

“So, which are you? Do you want to hear the secret information hope's peak leaked? Or do you want to buy it in its entirety? The former is 10,000 yen, the latter 3,000,000.”  
  
“Neither.” Mukuro had an excellent plan to handle this situation. “I’ve come here to punch you.” Maybe it was not on the level of Junko’s planning but she had tried genuinely to handle this herself for once.  
  
“To punch me. Aaaaah. So the message you sent me was a fake, and this is a trap.” He blinked slowly, then rolled up his eyes on her. “I see. Well done. Apologies for underestimating you, you look too normal to reach me. Not many people could. Only someone who’s a touch abnormal could get this far.”  
  
Abnormal. The moment she heard those words, three people flashed through her mind. Kurokami Medaka, Kumagawa misogi, then her own sister Enoshima Junko. Those kinds of overwhelming people whose mere presence seemed to invite trouble like an unwritten law of the universe. Ikusaba Mukuro dry swallowed, not thinking of Kaiki but rather of the time she had lost to all three, Kurokami Medaka who had beaten her up on that island so easily, her sister who had lured her into getting stabbed with spears, the days she tried to fight Kumagawa. “What you’re doing is spreading despair and unrest? I don’t have to explain why it’s a huge pain in the butt do I?”  
  
The only one who spread despair was.  
Her huge pain in the butt sister.  
  
“No, you're wrong I'm not doing this because I hate humans and want them to despair. I love humans, especially their money."   
  
“That’s a really lazy excuse. It’s only said by super highschool level annoying people. You should come up with a better one. What are you thinking?”  
  
“What am I thinking? Quite a deep question. Unfortunately, I’ll have to respond with a shallow answer. I’m doing it for money, naturally.”  
  
Not…  
Not despair.  
  
“What, did you think I was that kind of information broker that sold information simply to watch how people would react to it? I don’t make enough to engage in that kind of wasteful and frivolous activity.”  
  
“Money?”  
  
“Money makes the world go round. I suppose you’ve come here out of some sense of justice, but that was a mistake. You could have earned 100,000 yen for this.” He sat back in his chair, folding his hands over his lap. “The lesson for you here is that working for free isn’t worth it.”  
  
The reason their academy was getting thrown into chaos this time, was not somebody aiming to spread despair but rather for a simple and petty reason like money.  
  
“My boyfriend didn’t have to pay me!”  
  
“You must not be smart if you're giving away your services for free."   
  
“What do you mean some sense of justice?”

“Well, simply speaking why are you here? Whose justice are you following? Is it your own? Or are you telling yourself, ‘I need to do this to prove myself to someone else’.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Oh it’s the latter isn’t it. That’s no good. A girl your age should have higher self esteem. If you valued yourself more, you could get somebody else to pay you.”  The shadows made his face seem even more angular, as her building anger only made Kaiki smile all the more. “How young, you are. I’m not at all jealous, though. What’s wrong? You’re shaking, Ikusaba.”  
  
All she needed to be full of was Makoto’s hope.  
She wanted to be the one to protect Makoto’s hope. Makoto’s hope was so powerful, it had reached her whose heart was on some distant battlefield far away from her body. It had even allowed her to survive in that killing game without him by her side. All she needed to do was believe in him, no matter how far apart they were.  
  
“I’m not shaking. I’m holding back my murderous impulse.”  
  
“I see. How kind of you to do that.” Kaiki said, and then diplomatically leaned forward once more. “Ikusaba, you’ve heard what I wanted. Now it’s your turn. What do you want? Try to speak from the heart this time.”  
  
She wanted this school to go back to being the school that Makoto loved. The school that made Makoto smile. That beautiful smile. The reason there were cracks in this tower now was because her and her sister had made them. It was her fault. She could not say she was on the side of justice when she was the villain who had destroyed this school. She had no justice of her own, only what Makoto had shown her. She was empty, that was why all she could do. “I told you already. I came here to punch you.”  
  
“Just to punch me?”  
  
“Also to kick you.”  
  
“Violence, then?”  
  
“Violence! It’s all I’m good for!  I’ll use it to make you stop this.”

“I’m sure you’re good for much more than that, Ikusaba. Believe in yourself a little more.”

 _Why is this total stranger being nicer to me than my sister._ Ikusaba lamented, before slamming her foot on the floor. “Trying to manipulate a bunch of high schoolers for money? What are you thinking? And you call yourself an adult.”  
  
“I’m an adult, yes.” Slowly, he swung his legs around, untilt they were crossed. Only then did Ikusaba notice on top of how angular his body was, he was also skinny to the point of looking starved. Mukuro had only seen one person before with a body shaped like a shifting shadow, a boy who was her only family.“Of course I am, I’m a con man. A fake.”  
  
“Then the information?”  
  
“All lies. False information, just rumors. I have no idea what the protests are about, just that the school is in unrest and it’s the perfect time to stir up drama.”  
  
“Aren't you embarrassed for getting involved in high school drama?"   
  
“Not at all. Children are stupid and easy to fool. But, Ikusaba if you want to stop me punches and kicks are useless. The fastest way would be to bring money. I was once a cute kid walking down the right path, and I only ended up like this because something really painful happened that made me this way. My life tragedy was bought and sold by the mob, once I pay them off I'll go back to being a good kid."   
  
"That sounds like a lie."   
  
"Here's my good-intentioned advice, life will not be fun if you disbelieve everything other people say."  
  
"Your advice wasn't good intentioned at all!"  
  
"You're right, it wasn't."  
  
"Were you lying when you said you were human?"   
  
“Unfortunately, I am human, yes.” He seemed very disappointed about this. "Is there a difference between our reasons?"  
  
“A d-difference?”  
  
“What you want is ‘a reason to keep fighting’ because you have such little confidence in your own life Ikusaba, isn't’ that right? A reason to fill you up. There’s nobody that can keep going without a reason. Well, there is one person but he’s rather annoying.” He paused for a moment looking out in the distance. "Money is an object of value, that's why you paid money for that new uniform?"  
  
“D-don’t talk about my new uniform!” Mukruo realized her comeback was incredibly lame. Unlike her sister she could not think of 1,000 witty comebacks in less than a second.  
  
He stood up and pulled white gloves over his hand, with delicate slow precision. Then, started to leave. Ikusaba stood in his way. “We’re not done yet,I... I have to be useful. I have to fight you."   
  
“I think thematically, violence is a bad lesson to teach any children who happen to be reading. So, here is a lesson for you.” He grabbed her by the shoulder, and whispered into her ear. His mouth fell open, still smiling, and she saw he had a long tongue and a black tattoo of some kind of Kanji written on that tongue.  
  
Some kind of abnormality. It must have been. Like Ajimu Najimi or Kumagawa. Before she could even process what she heard, the stranger had let go of her and walked around her. She tried to go after him, but her legs collapsed from under her. Suddenly, the whole room was neither black, nor white, she saw colors swirling in every direction.  
  
It was hot, too hot, her vision blurred. The air was so hot she could barely breathe.  
  
Just at that moment, Naegi and Togami had finally caught up to her. Makoto saw her on the floor and quickly, he pushed past Togami who took a handkerchief out and brushed off his shoulder at the contact.  
  
“What did you do to her?”

“Something bad. Are you the one who sent here here? You should have sent money, that would have solved this problem easier.”  
  
“You…!” Makoto growled at him.  
  
Togami finished wiping off his shoulder. “Wait, I think we should listen to him. He sounds like he might have a point.”  
  
Hands in his pocket, Kaiki turned his head around one final time to look at the three children he left in the Karoake booth’s wake. “The lesson for you here is. Assume everyone you meet is a fake. A con. A double. Learn to doubt others. Did you think I would beg for forgiveness if you hit me? If you want me to have a change of heart bring me some money. I’d be willing to discuss it for 10,000,000 yen.”  
  
“Togami!” Makoto cried out.  
  
“Sure, but you'll owe me your services as a secretary for life, as a life debt."  
  
“You’re not being a very cool best friend right now!” Makoto yelled back at him.  
  
“I think he has a point. If you want him to be a higher quality best friend you should pay him more, but still.” Kaiki went through the wallet he had plucked from Mukuro’s jacket. “I’m taking money for this visit. Hmm, 4,000 yen. You're her boyfriend so you should lend her money. Oh, and take her to the hospital after this."  
  
"A-aren't you a villain?"   
  
"That's no reason to forget to be considerate to others, I'm not a child."  
He threw her wallet back.  
Togami was the first to catch it, as he had priorities. Then, the door slammed shut behind him.  
Mukuro quickly got a fever so high she was unable to move. Makoto had to carry her back to the neurology building on his back. It was heavy but he insisted on doing it by himself the whole time.  
  
Not that Togami offered to help even once. In fact he complained about having to follow Makoto there, as these were his good shoes and he had already walked a great deal today.  
  
The moment Ikusaba Mukuro was put on a hospital bed, the clumsy noises of Kumagawa’s running, dragging along Matsuda Yasuke behind him appeared in the hospital room.

Of course there was one more person who was destined to show up. She waited until Yasuke went to talk to Makoto, and Togami left because he didn’t care.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi watching the unconscious Ikusaba Mukuro fidget back and forth in her sleep heard something behind the door. He walked forward and pulled it open to see Enoshima Junko, eavesdropping by pressing her ear against it.

『Ahhhh, Junko. Have you come to enjoy your sister’s misery?』  
  
“Well duh, how could I be a good sister if I let her suffer alone in silence? She won’t be alone or silent if I’m right there next to her laughing at her.”

『Hey, Junko.』He bopped his forehead against hers as she started to stand up with the hand he offered her. 『I’m sorry, it was my fault, I was wrong.』  
  
“Eh? Eh? Eh? Oi, you can’t go reversing your catch phrases like that! That’s like me suddenly yelling about hope.”

『You yell about hope like, all the time.』  
  
“Yeah, about how lame it is!”

Kumagawa Misogi wondered if he was going to have to hear Enoshima Junko and Komaeda Nagito talk about basically the same thing for the rest of his life.Chatterboxes the both of them. 『Junko, I’m sorry we didn’t talk things out earlier.』  
  
“Well talking is boring anyway…”

『I’m really scared, because my entire life was based off laughing off trauma. I’m scared of what I’ll do when I can’t laugh anymore. That island was, it’s different than everything that came before. I’m scared you won’t love how I’m different now.』Kumagawa said, as he kept his forehead against hers, and stared into her eyes. She had no idea why he wanted to stare into her eyes. His eyes were unfathomably deep, purer than pure, hers were just shallow and empty. There was nothing fresh or pure about them, if they were water the water would have become stagnant long ago. 『A stupid thing to worry about, right? I’m sorry I’m not smart like you. I’m not particularly good at figuring things out either. I’m slow, and it takes me awhile. I’ll keep trying though, if you want me.』

  
“I want you…” She murmured, and then bit her lip hard to recover her usual unpleasantness. “I mean, obviously that’s why I have to drag you along. Please try to follow my awesome example from now on.”

『You’re not a really good role model, Junko.』  
  
“I am for cool people.”

『Destroying the world isn’t very cool.』  
  
“It’s the hottest new trend! It’s totally going to be a meme soon.”

Kumagawa Misogi smiled at this as he finally drew back. Enoshima almost missed his closeness, missed his warmth. 『I don’t want you to get bored of me, so I’m always trying to think of ways for us to have fun.』  
  
“I…” It was so rare for her to hesitate, she was a completely unscrupulous person after all. “I don’t want to get bored of you either.” She hid her own self interest as usual. _I don’t want to become bored of everything._

What she had run from her whole life.  
What she would continue to run from.  
However, at the moment those who were running in the same direction. They fought, they cut into each other, they tasted warmth, they made up.  
  
It seemed spontaneous but the reason for it was obvious. There was something more that connected those two, something that made them feel.  
  
We are connected by M.  
No, not Matsuda. The girl sitting unconscious in between them. Ikusaba Mukuro. She wanted nothing more than to save her sister, and she had already saved Kumagawa Misogi’s heart once. The moment she had gotten sick with fever, those two had stopped petty squabbling.  
  
Now they were on the same side again.  
Mutual love.  
Really, how terrible.


	12. The Wheel that Spins us Around

A long time ago. He had asked Junko why she stepped on that sand castle, why she had to destroy it.

“It was fun.”  
  
It was a simple answer. Truly, a truly Enoshima Junko-like answer. However, right now, currently I lacked an understanding of that -like. What did it mean to be Enoshima Junko-like? Something that simple had become very vague. I knew longer knew. It was like a deteriorating copy had begun seeping through to the back of the sheet.  
  
My thoughts regarding Enoshima, and Enoshima’s thoughts regarding me. Did she even think of me, once, only for a moment, in eighteen years of manipulation did the name Matsuda Yasuke even pass her mind? Just once, for a single moment if she saw me as an individual, if I had been seen, it might have been worth it.  
  
Perhaps this is the decisive moment for me to anchor me, this is the moment where I finally define myself. Just as I start to think of that though-

“Yo - nice to see you again.”  
  
And.  
I had not even managed to think one single thing, before suddenly that voice rang like a high bell and he appeared before me again. He spoke in such a high falsetto, it did not sound like it came from human vocal chords, but rather a high efficiency imitation, a fake pretending to be human. A quality enough replacement for a human being probably, that you found at the store for a discount.   
  
“It’s not nice to see you again.”  
  
I close the door behind him. In the neurologist’s room once more, I gaze on the wall and see rather than a butterfly it’s a chrysalis that is pinned to the wall and framed. Again, the chair was facing away from me and yet I saw his back in it.  
  
The back of the father who abandoned me. Caring for my mother became too much trouble after she was infected with her disease, so he filed for divorce and left, that was it. I never had any special thoughts about the man so why now of all times.  
  
“Why do you look at me like a sworn enemy? I’ve been dead for a long time you know, it’s been quite some time since I’ve spoke to a human like this. Despite appearances I love company very much. I’m purely lonely. So lonely that it cannot be helped. We’re alike aren’t we, you spent your entire life alone too.”  
  
“What are you talking about? You already know I always had Junko by my side.”  
  
“With Ultimate Despair? Woah there.” He chuckeled. It was a terribly human like action, which I suppose is obvious but because it was obvious I felt a terrible sense of misplacement. Do normal people have to think 'this is what a human being would do in this situation' before they act? “Oh, please. I don’t know what to say to that. Shouldn’t you know that best? Or are you saying that Ultimate Despair - Enoshima Junko is a human being? Communicating with that is an impossible task for anyone. Impossible for me as well as you as well as anyone else is that not right?”

“But Kumagawa…”  
  
“That may be better left unsaid. No, ignorance is bliss, perhaps.” He said waving his hand in the air, as if conducting a melody only he could hear. “You don’t need to understand the way he understands her. It’s certainly not the truth, and a twisted perspective like that is better off forgotten. He’s quite gloomy you know, he has the eyes of a dead fish.”  
  
“Saying they are like a dead fish is a bit much. He can have good eyes sometimes.”  
  
“Good eyes they are, they have truly impressive levels of rotting.” Fukurou grinned truly enjoying himself. Whether that meant he purely enjoyed speaking, or that meant he enjoyed observing, or whether that meant he was only acting like he enjoyed himself while he did not enjoy himself in the slightest I cannot tell.  
  
“You’re aware of schrodinger's box aren’t you?”

“Isn’t that a bit overused as a motif. Isn’t it a cat?”  
  
“No, no, don’t worry I’m going somewhere with this. No we’re here to talk about boxes. The cat, the flask of poison, a radioactive sensor and a radioactive source are placed in a box waiting for a single radioactive atom to decay. If the sensor detects decay, the flask is shattered releasing the poison which kills the cat. There’s a fifty fifty shot that atom will decay in one hour while the experiment is being done.”  
  
“So…? Why are you talking about the box so much.”  
  
“The experiment cannot be concluded until the cat is observed. It’s not that things are simultaneously alive and dead inside the bo, it’s that they don’t exist until others observe them, Until the box is removed.”

“What does that have to do with me…?”  
  
“You’ve been alone all your life haven’t you? You thought the person named Enoshima Junko was observing you, but she’s not someone who can make human connections, she was never looking at you to begin with. Thus you don’t exist, you still don’t exist, you’re trapped in the box my poor kitten.”  
  
“Stop it…”  
  
“You’re going to forget who you are soon. When you do, please share the results with me. I’d love to observe you, I’m lonely enough to observe you at least. Poor Matsuda, the only person who will observe you is a ghost that doesn’t even exist to begin with. Unable to observe others, unable to observe. Enoshima Junko is in a similar state, the only boy that’s looking at her has the eyes of a dead and rotten fish, he’s deluded.”

The chair spun around again, and there was no-one there. On the wall there was no frame, no butterfly in any stage of its life pinned underneath the glass.

However, once again there just happened to be someone standing in the doorway. It was not just Matsuda Yasuke who hated himself, it also seemed like the world hated him, unable to leave him alone even now. He thought ugly things were supposed to be thrown out and rejected, looked away from, yet people kept looking at him in ugly moments like this.  
  
And thus he returned to the objective position of narrator.  
The lonely, lonely position of narrator.  
There was another human being in the room, reminding him that he was alone.

Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.

“You seem to be doing well, unlike me. Really, you make me jealous. You improved yourself, defeated Kurokami Medaka, and made her into your girlfriend. Hitoyoshi your life is truly one of smooth sailing.”  
  
“Thanks to you.”  
  
“Thanks to me? I locked you in a killing game, I’ve barely talked to you in months, what exactly do you think I did for you?”

“Well, that’s…”  
  
“It was all on your own. You always achieve everything from your own hard work, you'll graduate, go to college, marry the girl of your dreams, have beautiful children and happy ending!"  
  
“Th-that’s not really true. I’ve got to work my ass off just to lag behind her, and I’m not really good enough for Medaka yet.”  
  
“You don’t have to be so humble. You always try your hardest don’t you? You always give your most sincere efforts no matter what the circumstances even though you’re only a normal guy.”  
  
“Well, trying hard that’s like my only redeeming quality rather than something I’m good at.”    
  
“Don’t say that about yourself. You’re well built and muscular, you can hold your own in a fight, you’re handsome, you’re kind, you always think of others, you can understand others easily, you’re bright like the sun, really you’re the whole package.”  
  
Matsuda Yasuke was unkempt, his body was emaciated his shirt was dirty and unwashed he had not cut his hair in months, and he always glared at everybody with his girly eyes. He had a nasty tongue and no friends. He was overjoyed to be in the presence of Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.   
  
It was an honor really.  
He should wash Zenkichi's feet.   
He should do it with his tongue.   
  
“...?”  
  
“Someone like you really pisses me off, heat!"  
  
“Yasu… we’re friends.”  
  
“We can’t be friends. I tried to move on, but everything about your existence really pisses me off.”  
  
“For someone normal like me… Come on, it can’t be that much. I don’t even have that many outstanding qualities to hate on.”  
  
“I hate that attitude of yours the most. You’re way too ambiguous. Of course there’s nothing really to hate about you, there’s nothing there to begin with. What is there of Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, you don’t have to be a person as long as you’re Kurokami Medaka’s shadow! Even back then it’s not like you did any of that yourself, you only defeated Medaka-chan to free her, you did it out of love for her! Quit acting like you’re a person in front of me.”  
  
“Uhh, I don’t really know how to stop being a person. Matsuda you’re sharp tongued, but it’s worrying that you’re suddenly freaking out like this, why do you keep disappearing places to talk to yourself?”  
  
“Stop it. I don’t want you to worry about me. There’s absolutely nothing special about someone like you being worried about me.”  
  
“Is that so? You… you seem to have quite a hatred for people who are happy.”  
  
“I do like people who are happy. Looking at them makes me feel happy. What I despise are people who don’t know the reason for their happiness. Those that don’t eevn think about why they’re happy. Id espise water that thinks it’s boiled on its own. I depsise seasons that think they cycle naturally. I despise the sun that thinks it rose on it’s own. I despise the whole world that continues to spin! I hate it all, it should just go die!”  
  
“...”  
  
“Because things just happened to work out better for you, because your childhood friend was kind and truly loved you, because you got assistance along the way, don’t rub that in my face. Don’t pretend you can help me, like you’re an enlightened individual. There is no Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, without Kurokami Medaka. It’s as simple as that.”

Agitated. Agitated. Agitated.  
Salt on an open wound.  
He deliriously pushed his way past Hitoyoshi Zenkichi. He only stopped for one moment to look at the smile on his face.  
He had wanted to break it, he had wanted to blot out that light that shined like the sun. That was the only purpose behind his words.  
The light was getting in his eyes.  
It agitated him.  
  
It was not like the professor said something that bothered him. He did not exist, he was an unseen child? That was good, that was so good that was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be alone, he wanted nobody to look at him, he wanted not to be seen anymore.  
  
He was on his way to becoming the ultimate loner. Exactly as planned. If he could convince Hitoyshi Zenkichi not to sympathize with him, an idiot like that who was willing to sympathize with anybody then his plan would be going off perfectly without a hitch.  
  
He stumbled into the hallway and slammed his fist against the wall. He slammed it again and again, until he heard a cracking noise. He was too numb by that point to even notice, if it was not for the noise he would not have stopped.  
  
Mastuda made a face unseen to anybody in the world. A secret to him, and himself the lone.  
As he felt his fingers to make sure nothing was broken, as he sunk against the wall one thought reverberated through him.

_God, I’m such a bitch._

 

😈

 

The world continues to turn.  
The wheel spins around. It’s all meaningless anyway, it happens regardless of what I do.  
Enoshima Junko could have made anybody into her childhood friend. I thought the fact that I met her was something special, but it was probably a pre-planned event by her.  
  
Junko used to do that all the time. She would run to me crying about how she had hurt herself and asked me to kiss it better, only for me to find out later she had tripped and given herself a bruise or a cut on purpose. She would get picked on by other kids, only for me to find out later after defending her that Junko went out of her way to provoke them.  
  
All of it was a pre-written scenario, so it could have been anyone. The characters don’t matter as long as they follow along with the script. I used to think I was someone special to her but…

The wheel of fate turns.  
Now the person at the center of her world is Kumagawa Misogi. The wheel of fortune more like.  
  
There was a boy I met once. He was sick with some kid of brain disease, his hair had turned all the way white. He had developed an impossible condition that nobody had ever shown in his age before.  
  
I thought again and again what had happened to this kid to make him this way, but there was no answer. It was just bad luck. The wheel of fate turned and it turned out of his favor.  
  
The same for Kumagawa right now, he’s the one who has be bad fortune to be at the center of that girl’s arbitrary eyes. There’s no sense to it at all. I don’t care. Lucky for him. Or rather unlucky for him.  
  
Let’s go back to talking about those idiots. There’s no point in dwelling on some loner feeling bad about himself in a hallway. I’ll rejoin the story later I promise.  
  
After three days, Enoshima Junko had gotten no sleep. Kumagawa Misogi had not either, because he had been kept up by her the whole time.

『Izuru-chan does Junko seem to be acting kind of off to you lately.』  
  
“Always.”

『Huh?』

“She was never on.” Izuru said bitterly.  
  
Kumagawa waved his hands in front of the other’s face. Izuru’s face barely moved in reaction. 『No, no, I mean there's something different about her.』  
  
**😈 Day one of Junko with no sleep.**   **😈**

“Bear River, Bear River, Bear River!”

『Ehhh? What poor unfortunate bear is drowning in a river-f』  
  
Before he could finish his sentence she shoved food on a pair of chopsticks into his mouth. Day one of Enoshima Junko distracting herself instead of falling asleep. She had actually bothered cooking for once, she was wearing a pink apron with her hair tied back in one tail instead of two. She was of course not wearing a naked apron, because Kumagawa has done nothing to deserve that kind of happiness, nothing.  
  
A boxed lunch was set up in front of him, and he was taken by surprise.

『Oh, I see. I’m the one drowning in Junko’s love.』  
  
She had spent all night cooking it, it looked almost immaculate. Kumagawa could see she had even spelled out the words ‘JUNKO LOVE’ in the rice. However. “Oh gosh, I’ve never done something like this for a cool upper classman before! That magical moment of high emotion, stress, heart break rejection, regret. Girls have to go out of their way to give presents to the boys they’re obsessed with.”  
  
Enoshima Junko’s hands had somehow wrapped around his neck at this point, and her chin was leaning on his head. Kumagawa closed one eye and kept listening.  
  
“Oh gosh. I’ve never done something like this for a cool upperclassmen before.”

『Junko, you called me cool, and you cooked something on your own, are you okay?』  
  
“Normally I’d make Mukuro buy all the ingredients, and make Mukuro cook it and have Mukuro deliver it, while I slaved away watching her, but instead I made it myself just for you to give it that special touch. S-so open it quick, alright?”

『This is poisoned isn’t it?』  
  
“The secret ingredient is love.”

『The secret ingredient is poison.』

“Upupu!” Enoshima’s response was only to cover her mouth with her nails, for the most petite of girlish giggles, the cutest of evil laughs. “It’s so friggin symbolic of our love.”  
  
Rather than spitting up what he had already eaten, Kumagawa grabbed a huge chunk with his hands and started to devour it. “Wait, what are you doing! Are you stupid!? I’m not just saying that to sound tsundere are you legitimately stupid!”

『Yes. I’m a proud idiot! I laugh and play the fool on stage!』

“Don’t sound so proud when you’re willingly shoving rat poison in your mouth. You take pride in the dumbest things!”

『Ahhh, but if it’s symbolic of our love I have to devour it.』  
  
“If you try to swallow it up you’re just going to vomit it all back out!”

『Ahhh, but Junko your love makes me want to vomit.』  
  
“Oh… thank you.” Junko covered her cheeks with her same hand, covering the cute red spots that had formed. Unlike everything else about her face that was not an act, or not entirely. “So does yours.”

Kumagawa did not sleep that night because he spent the entire night vomiting his guts out. It was his first memory of a girl ever giving him a boxed lunch. It seemed that Junko had forgotten that Kumagawa perceived almost everything she did to him as a challenge.  
  
**😈 Day of Two of Junko’s restlessness.** 😈  
  
“Bear River, Bear River, Bear River.”

『I hope that bear knows how to swim-』Before Kumagawa could finish answering her, she had shoved her hand into his pocket. His spine straightened and she shivered as Junko dug around looking for something and in the next moment he collapsed back onto the floor when Junko pulled out his phone.

She tapped the phone with her red nails a few times then immediately stood over him and shoved it back in his face. “I deleted all the pictures of other people off your phone, let’s take a selfie together and make it the background. Actually wait-” Junko immediately struck several different successive poses, like a localized photoshoot happening on command. Then, she switched gears just as easily and went back to pouring enough attention on him to flash flood and drown him. “Now you have tons of pictures of me you don’t need to take any more.”

『Huh. That’s weird. Wouldn’t you usually go, ‘Misogi don’t take photoes of me on your phone what are you some kind of stalker?’ and then ‘Misogi we can’t take a selfie together your ugliness is too much it’s going to devour my beauty I can only take perfect selfies to show off my perfect body’』  
  
Enoshima Junko narrowed her eyes. “What kind of image do you have of me exactly?”

『An accurate one.』  
  
Junko immediately sat down next to him and pinched his cheek. Kumagawa grabbed her own cheek back. He took that as a challenge too, and they competed the entire time Junko tried to take a selfie.

“Hey, you don’t need any other contacts right? Good, deleted. You can just set me for every number of the speed dial.”  
  
Kumagawa read the contact name that was in front of his face. 『Junko Love.』

That night she was up all night texting him, and kept him up all night as well. Even though they were right next to each other and could have just talked. When he tried to say something out loud Junko just ignored him and stared at her phone.

😈 **Day Three of Junko's No Slumber Slumber Party Naughty Edition with Boys Invited** 😈

“Bear River, Bear River, Bear River!”

『Junko aren’t you getting bored of this gag already?』  
  
Junko ignored him and continued on shoving something in his face. Kumagawa quickly let the what was in his hands unfold and saw there was a great oversized for someone as skinny as him hand knit sweater. It read JUNKO LOVE in bright red letters, with a heart replacing the O.

『Junko Love.』  
  
“Junko Love!”

Kumagawa was starting to get confused on what the concept of Junko Love meant. Perhaps that was the theme of this whole series, the series’ greatest mystery. No, that’s dumb. 『Are there fire ants in this?』  
  
“Nope.”

『Is it possessed? Am I going to be possessed by a ghost?』  
  
“Upupupu, nu-uh.”

『Is it going to burst into flames the moment I put it on?.』  
  
“Just put the damn thing on, Misogi.” Junko said through a forced smile. Once he had pulled it over his head,only then did Junko announce the catch. “Now you can never take it off, I made seven more! Perfect for every day of the week! Eternal servitude to me.”

『Faust didn’t get screwed over this badly when he was making a deal!』Kumagawa quipped back and then tilted his head. 『Junko, were you up all night making this?』  
  
“It’s okay, I have caffeine pills.”

『Junko, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make your brain chemistry more unstable than it really is.』  
  
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it, Misogi.” Junko said, in her usual foreboding way, cupping her cheek in her hand and smiling, probably smiling so devilishly at whatever she was foreshadowing with that statement.

 

😈

 

  
Catching up to the present, as Kumagawa recounted this story his eyes looked like even more of a dead fish than usual. 『Technically Junko can go back to school unlike me, so I don’t really know why she’s spending every waking moment with me.』Yawn. 『Literally every waking moment.』  
  
“Some people just don’t know how to show their affection.” Izuru said, slowly shaking his head his long black hair trailing behind him. He would know he was one of those people. He looked odwn to observe the large ‘JUNKO LOVE’ sweater that Kumagawa was wearing over his black reserve course uniform.  
  
『You think so? Maybe she caught the dumbass disease and her Ryoko-chan is showing.』

“What did she get it from, kissing you?”

『Izuru-chan that’s no fair! Don’t make fun of one of your own! What happened to our shared dumbass pride? Don’t forget who you are!』  
  
“You take pride in the strangest things.”

『It’s fine though, I just came to check on Mukuro-chan. If Junko needs me awake by her side, then this time for sure...』Yawn. 『I won’t fail her.』He looked down to see Mukuro stirring in her feverish sleep again. Kumagawa’s eyes pained when he saw her shiver, the dead fish’s eyes sunk deeper and deeper. Suddenly on impulse, he crawled into the bed with her and held her until she stopped shaking. However, due to being in close proximity to a bed, Kumagawa’s eyes grew heavier and he instantly fell asleep. He had already lost in his battle against Junko.  
  
A moment later, Junko came wandering in bored. Hinata had been staring at Kumagawa sleeping and had decided to just sit there and watch him until he woke up rather than wake him up himself. He did not seem to realize how creepy that was, the poor guy. He just was a big fan of spending long stretches of time quietly.

“What happened did he catch the dumbass disease from Mukuro?”  
  
“We already used that joke.”  
  
“Boo! Don’t go joking around without me!” Junko walked forward and pinched her sister on the cheek. For three days her fever had refused to break, but other than muttering in her sleep she showed no signs of change. “Haven’t you figured out what’s wrong with her yet? I swear, all the world’s talent goes to waste on you Hinata-senpai.”  
  
“Yes that is something we have in common.” He commented drily, before moving his face slightly to glance down at Mukuro. “There’s nothing physically wrong with her. It must be psychosomatic.”  
  
“Psychosomatic?”  
  
“I know you know what that word means, Junko.”  
  
“But we need somebody to ask the dumb questions. We don’t have Hajime here anymore to do it for us. Unless you want to split back in half and call him up!”  
  
“...”

“So you’re saying my sister’s such an idiot she forgot how to wake up?” Junko considered it for a moment, and then angrily stomped her book. “You know what nevermind, I’m tired of good storytelling let’s just solve this with magic. Ajimuuuu-saaaaan!”

Hinata flinched slightly from the high pitched nature of her voice.  
  
“Yahoo, Junko-chan!” As usual, Najimi Ajimu appeared with a change in the wind. “There’s nothing I can do.”  
  
“Lazy!”  
  
“What did you suddenly see yourself in a mirror?” Ajimu said with a tilt of her head. “Unlike you I don’t need to lie, in fact the truth and lies are the same to me. I really can’t do anything, Ikusaba-san is under the effect of no abnormality that I know of. It’s likely something completely new.”  
  
Both girls stared at Izuru for a moment.  
  
“...”  
“...”  
“...Fine. Something completely new?”

  
At that moment it was not Ajimu but rather Mukuro who answered. She stirred in her sleep again, pushing Kumagawa away from her, and then grasping at the sheets. She had already become drenched with sweat and needed to be wiped down every hour. Her skin was so red even Junko had to acknowledge it and stop making fun of how colorless and lifeless her sister’s skin usually was. Of course she just made fun of how much her sister stank from sweating up a storm, instead. But it was a little frustrating as no matter how much she poked or prodded her sister, Mukuro would not wake up. It was like she was ignoring a direct command from Junko.

She continued to pull at the sheets until her sisters tore through them. As everyone in the room heard the sound of slow ripping fabric Mukuro finally spoke up.

“Punishment… it’s… a punishment.”  
  
“Eh?”  
  
“Have you ever thought about it Junko? Why do you think Misogi-chan has such bad luck… it has to be our fault… we hurt so many people and were never punished. Instead, he came to meet us, he became like our family, and he took the punishment in our stead, punished for the sake of his foolish older sister it’s arbitrary… meaningless… because punishment is the most cruel…”

“What are you tormenting yourself? Isn’t dealing with Misogi enough of a punishment? I’m pretty sure him randomly showing up was punishment the rest of our lives. Ewe, what a stalker gross, go away.” Junko said in her normal egotistical way, poking at her sister’s cheek.  
  
Mukuro had fallen back into her fever, she said nothing else only letting a labored breath out, and grabbing at the shirt around her chest trying to loosen it. No, like there was a fire in her chest trying to escape, and holding it in was so painful that she would even dig her fingers into her own flesh and pry her rib cage apart in order to let it be free.  
  
“She might not be wrong. You know, Kumagawa-kun is rather flawed.”  
  
“Wow, you mean he’s not a perfect uwu soft boy angel.”  
  
“Please stop uwuing Junko, there are children present.” Ajimu said, sighing at the girl’s usual high energy even after three days of not sleeping. “Not only is he flawed, All Fiction itself is flawed. There are some things it seems he’s unable to undo and when he tries, he makes it worse for himself.”  
  
“You mean…”  
  
Ajimu smiled, in a moment there was only a few centimeters between her and Junko’s face. An inhuman gesture of invading private space. “You know, Kumagawa’s supposed to be eighteen he was a third year going at a normal high school but when he first met you he was two years older than you. Do you know why? Because when Kumagawa erased the tragedy he erased two years of tragic happenings that were tied to it. I’m sure I’ve told you already, in the original version of this story Kumagawa-kun went to sandbox academy, graduated, and then lived through the end of the world.”  
  
“He did…?”  
  
“He didn’t even notice. As a world full of despair was a regular for him. I’m sure though, while living homeless, traveling from place to place after graduating from Sandbox and deciding to remove himself from Zenkichi and Medaka’s lives to never trouble them again. I’m sure that he must have seen your execution broadcast on live tv, maybe he just passed by a window with a stack of broken televisions and saw one of them still working, and he witnessed your own ultimate punishment on live television. Do you know what he thought?”  
  
Enoshima merely tilted her head to the side.  
  
“He thought, ‘That girl doesn’t look like she’s having any fun, that’s no good.’ Really Kumagawa-kun, always sympathizing with the villains no wonder he’s so twisted.” Ajimi backed up finally and held two fingers in the air. As she did suddenly a screw appeared between them. As she closed her fingers together, the screw made /an awful scraping noise as its end was grinded away. “I doubt he even remembers that, but I reember watching it through his eyes. Anyway, because that scene never happened Kumagawa-kun paid for it with two years of his own life. That was erasing the tragedy, then he erased the killing game and as a result he was forced to relive the killing game for seven years over and over again. That’s seven more years taken away.”

  
“Are you trying to call me out or something, or just playing exposition fairy again.”  
  
“Neither. I was just speculating whether the term called punishment exists. It certainly does in narratives.” She turned on her heel to leave the room, her red eyes still focused on Junko as she went. It was almost impossible to escape those eyes. “Don’t you think I did you a favor then? Now you can share the punishment with him. Though, I wonder how much you’ll take from him next time.”  
  
As she disappeared, Junko crossed her arms over her ample chest again. She pulled her lips tight and bit the corner of them in crustration. “Obviously I’m going to take everything.” She looked and saw Kumagawa’s hand had fallen open. She took it for a moment and saw the stitched up wound in the center of it. “Oh fun, so that worked out how I expected.”  
  
“What did you do?” Hinata immediately asked.  
  
“I didn’t do anything. I’ve just been watching my dear classmates, and I made a prediction on how they would behave in reaction to the…. Well you know under stress, nevermind I don’t want to explain it.” She got bored of her own explanation, and after giving the sleeping Kumagawa Misogi’s hand a squeeze she shrugged and left.

  
Hinata wondered for a moment how Kumagawa could have slept through being in the presence of such overwhelmingly loud women. Oh well, that kind of troublesome woman seemed to be his type after all.

 

**😈**

The wheel continues to spin.

You know like, once it spins it can’t land on the same result twice. Human interaction is like that, it’s so random and chaotic, never the same thing twice. Not only that but it’s impossible to go back to the previous position on the wheel once the wheel has spun again.  
  
That’s why I’m better off as a loner. I’ve bypassed the system. Nothing will spin my way, no genuine moments of human and empathy are going to change me. I’m dedicated to remaining a bitch forever.  
  
Determination is supposed to be one of those heroic shonen jump values, right? Though I only read seinen manga these days. I’m not Kumagawa. Thank god for that my only good quality.   
  
Just as Enoshima Junko thought of it, as if she was the one spinning the wheel Munakata happened to be meeting with Naegi Makoto again at that precise moment. “My dear boy.” He said as he stood up on the table.  
  
Kyosuke Munakata (not Kei Munakata he was busy elsewhere at the moment) wore a well fitting white suit, and styled his white hair parted to the side. His entire appearance was sleek and efficient, it seemed like there was not a hair out of place on his head. He was so cleanly and well kept it was amazing he was standing on the table.  
  
Makoto on the other side of the table, clambered onto it much less eagerly.  
  
“You should  keep a better eye on your subordinates. First Hitoyoshi Zenkichi falls sick, and after him Ikusaba Mukuro? There’s no such things as coincidence, Kirigiri is a fool for believing in good or bad luck. Too many coincidences in a row is a sign of malice.” He lectured sternly as he readied a pen like it was a sword and rushed to the other side of the table.  
  
Makoto saw Munakata’s black dress shoes move before he did. In the next moment there was a pen flying near his face, all Makoto could do was throw his head wildly out of the way. “They’ll be back soon I know it, I trust them. They’re both much stronger than me.”  
  
“What an interesting thing to say, it’s very you.” Munakata said, the word you he spoke with unrestrained malice in his voice The two of them were a play in contrast. Munakata’s whitened hair, his regal looking appearance, whis pure white suit. Whereas Makoto was dressed in an all black suit, and trying to stand out despite having the appearance and character design of villager number two.  
  
Kyosuke Munakata was the young hope of Hope’s Peak. A former graduate himself, specifically a former student council president, as expected that the school’s corruption would be cleared by him rapidly climbing in the ranks, and after overseeing construction of the expansion he would return to the original school and claim the seat from Kirigiri Jin as Headmaster.

However, such a heroic tale with him as the protagonist never came to pass. A study in contrast, Munakata was strong, he stood tall and proud, and he had the same kind of charisma that Makoto had that attracted loyal followers to his particular brand of hope. Not only that but Munakata was strong, he could fight so easily in this small sparring match that Makoto was barely staying alive in. Munakata was a fan of the old Kurokami Medaka, of her overwhelmig strength, he made his opinion quite clear of her two replacements, the normal Zenkichi and the dumb luck protagonist Makoto.  
  
“So, has Kumagawa Misogi been located yet?” The moment the name left Munakata’s lips Makoto hesitated. Munakata took full advantage of it. He kicked the other hard in the chest, and then won the sparring match easily. He loomed over the other, holding a pen towards his eye like it was a sword at his throat.  
  
“I concede…”  
  
“Pitiful. To think someone already as weak as you would act so weak in regards to his friends. Do you think you’re protecting him?” Munakata did not give up even after Makoto had conceded. He grabbed the boy by his hair, and dragged him up to force him to sit on the desk. “That child is connected to the dark side of this school and I will find him. As long as he exists disaster will continue to follow him wherever he goes.”  
  
“Yeah, so he’s having a hard enough time. Why don’t you just leave him alone already?”  
  
Munakata Kyosuke was never able to become the hero of his own story, of the story he saw his life to be, because right underneath his eyes, just as he was investigating Hope’s Peak, it was almost destroyed. Then, the next day it was saved like it had never happened. Powerless, he felt utterly powerless like watching another’s story unfold before his eyes. Chisa had been terribly wounded, and held onto him crying. Any story that would end in Chisa crying, any world that would bring those about, was horribly, utterly, wrong. However, Munakata would not admit to his own powerlessness.  
  
He saw the boy in front of him and slammed his head hard onto  the desk. “Do you think you’re someone important now that you became student council president? Do you know why you were elected, the reserve course students were allowed to vote and they outnumber the Ultimates 30 to 1. You’re just a weakling all the other weaklings put in charge.” Munakata leaned low and whispered into his ears. “I can understand why you’d sympathize with someone like Kumagawa, he’s always lying and aren’t you doing the same? You string people along on empty promises, on platitudes you yourself aren’t strong enough to fulfill, ergo a lie.”

“No, I really believe in everything I say.” Makoto said gritting his teeth in case Munakata was going to lash out at him again.  
  
“Do you know how I became president? I worked myself so hard that some nights I stayed up crying from the stress. I learned everything necessary fighting, leadership, tactics. What have you done with your time? Wasted your life away, playing video games, reading comics, eating snacks. You had all the time in the world to become special, to become somebody and you wasted it, and yet you still expect us to treat you like you matter. Even though you’ve done nothing at all your entire life.”  
  
“I don’t care what you say. Talented people are just people too, Kumagawa, Mukuro, they’re just people no matter what they were like, I’m going to protect them.”  
  
“I know you’re hiding something about the girl too, but that’s fine. Keep protecting them, hero.” Munakata finally let go and straightened up. He picked up the sword that he had left by his side, throwing the pen away. “You remind me of Kirigiri Jin. You both, worthless untalented people, are just in awe of the talented. You want to feel special to them, so you think you can lead them, and you end up dragging everybody else down with you with your incompetence. Really… the only kind of situation where you can come out on top is a game where the rules are rigged in your favor. In the real world, where there are no rules, you need power to protect what you want.”

As silently as he entered he left. His presence so sharp and defiant it was like cutting the air itself. Naegi Makoto collapsed forward onto the desk, completely exhausted burying his head in his arms. He reminded himself over and over again, Munakata was volunteering his time teaching him because he had wanted to become a strong president. He wanted to become somebody who could fight alongside others like Munakata rather than somebody who simply always leeched off the strength of others.  
  
Yet, for some reason even though he knew he could endure this, he could not stop the tears from flowing from the corners of his eyes, and down the side of his face.

 

**😈**

 

Now it’s time for me to come back. I know nobody was missing me. That’s just how the wheel turned this time.  
  
By the time he reached Ikusaba Mukuro’s hospital room, Kumagawa Misogi was already gone. Thank god. He pulled up a chair next to her bed and pulled out a volume of manga. It was not that he wanted to visit her, this just happened to be the only quiet room in the neurology hall, besides whatever room Izuru was occupying at the moment. That guy just seemed to devour noise simply by existing.  
  
However, Yasuke could not help but peek at the sleeping Ikusaba Mukuro. “Sleeping with your tongue hanging out, what are you a dog?”

In the past, he had watched Ryoko sleep making similiar stupid faces, in the neurology building just like this. However, those memories were all fake, like an invented backstory of a fictional character, just a performance put on by Enoshima Junko to mess with him. They no longer mattered.  
  
“...”  
  
“Not anything to say in response, what a rude bitch.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You know if you keep letting me insult you and not saying anything back I’ll start to feel like I’m the problem instead of everybody else.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I guess you’re used to that huh? Always being insulted and never saying anything back.”di

‘...”  
  
“Izuru told me his diagnosis. Psychosomatic symptoms, it’s like you’ve got a case of brain broke.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Listen, I was thinking back on what you said earlier. If my life is a stage play put on by Enoshima Junko, then it’s like you were backstage right from the beginning, huh?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Jeez, I’m whining about having to find out about Enoshima’s personality this late in the game. Yet, you’re the one who always knew what she was like from the beginning and you’re the one who had to accept her as your sister.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Hey, what is despair to Enoshima Junko? Was it just her making us fall in love with her and twisting that emotion into despair?”  
  
He knew her better than anyone else.  
Yet he did not know her at all.  
Ikusaba Mukuro knew her better than anyone else.  
Yet she had fatally misunderstood her sister.

Yasuke leaned all the way back in his chair. He let the manga volume rest on his head. He was not wearing his hair tied up today, so it was a mess falling in every direction. Fall, fall, fall it seemed that was all he was capable of doing. He had one struggled so valiantly to try to protect what was more important than anything, to try to fight the whole world if it meant defending her, now he wondered how he had ever had the energy to do that. Falling was easier, the movement was so small all he needed to do was let go. “Look, you’re right. In the past I never once noticed how Enoshima was treating you. If I had tried to stand up to her, if I had tried to become friends with you instead so you had at least somebody to comfort you. I could have done something but I…” Yasuke finally sat back up. He looked at the sleeping Mukuro, poking her in the forehead. “You and your sister have such big foreheads. Forehead girl, stupid forehead girl. Why does such a dumb girl have such a big head? I guess that’s the drawback of being twins.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Listen, are you just tormenting yourself with that fever because you can’t forgive yourself still for what happened with Junko? Well, it’s not like I can say whether or not the world can forgive you. I’m just one lone asshole. It’s not like I forgive you either but, it’s my fault too…” He reached forward and squeezed her hand. Disgusting. Human contact. Her hand was so sweaty. “So you don’t need to go suffering alone.”  
  
Had he finally broken out of the cage of being a loner?  
Of course not! The cage was incredibly comfortable, it’s iron bars kept Ensohima Junko’s prying claws out. Long live the cage!  
He was simply acting on his own as always. Earlier, he had been cruel to Hitoyoshi Zenkichi because Zenkichi was better than him, more noble, and it suited him. Now he was being kind to Ikusaba Mukuro, because Mukuro was more pathetic, more lowly, like a whining pleading dog continually beat by her master and that suited him too.

As arbitrary as the wheel, he spun back and forth with no center, nothing to ground him on. He no longer had any idea who he was after all, he just new who he was not, he was no longer Enoshima Junko’s childhood friend. Really, what did an arbitrary person like himself have to complain about.

  
**😈**

 

“You bitch, haven’t I done enough for you?” Sakakura Juzo slammed his fist hard into the table. Enoshima Junko who was sitting with her boots kicked up was barely fazed by his display of strength.  
  
“I don’t think you understand how blackmail works.” Enoshima Junko said adjusting her glasses. Her hair was pulled back into one tail instead of two. “Allow me to explain, after the first incident of black mail because you complied with my demands now I also have the secret of you betraying Munakata to protect your own personal pride to blackmail you with. As we continue on with this endeavor, my investment will only increase exponentially.”

“Just kill me and get it over with. I’d rather die than be converted into your lackey.” He grabbed the glasses off her face and smashed them to the ground.  
  
“Boo hoo…” Junko pouted, sticking her lips out. “Oh, you’ll die for Munaktaa but you won’t have an honest conversation about your feelings with him? What a wonderful relationship you have with him.”  
  
“What does a crazy bitch like you know about that?”  
  
“I know everything. There’s not a single thing I don’t know.” She bragged rather shamelessly, before pointing a nail at his forehead and commanding him to back off. “Now then, it’s not like I’m asking you for much. Just keep putting pressure on Munakata and suggesting that Naegi-kun is his enemy.”  
  
“I’m not here for you to work out your grudges against your classmates.”  
  
“Yes, you’re here to serve Munakata, but aren’t you doing a terrible job of that because you keep meeting up with me behind his back?” Enoshima Junko said, smiling at him pleasantly. Just then, cutting straight through her smugness another person appeared in the room entirely undetected by her, like a walking shadow.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi threw his arms around her back, and wrapped them around her lovingly from behind. 『Junko you’re meeting with somebody behind my back. No fair, I’ll get jealous.』  
  
“It’s just a little bit of despair on the side. You know like when you take a day off from your diet and binge.”  
  
Sakakura groaned in the background at the new visitor.  
  
“I love diet cheat day!” Junko said, with a smile on her face that looked ready to devour.

『Junko, I want to be the only one you send in despair I told you if you do it with someone else I’ll get jealous.』  
  
“Weren’t you asleep?”

『I decided to fake sleeping. You know, Ajimu-san is avoiding me lately she only shows up when she thinks I’m not looking I don’t know why.』  
  
“It’s probably because your face is so ugly she doesn’t want to see it.”  
  
At that moment, Sakakura who had been biding his anger the entire time exploded. He grabbed Kumagawa by the back of collar and lifted him up into the air. “Did you two forget I’m here? Well, never fucking mind it’s so great that whoever this is decided to show up, thank you I’m glad to meet you.”

『Wow, somebody’s happy to meet me for once. Nobody’s ever said that before.』  
  
“You’ll make the perfect hostage to get out of this situation.”

『Awe, there’s always a catch.』  
  
In the next moment, Kumagawa Misogi was put into a martial arts hold to restrain both of his arms from moving. “How about I break his bones in front of you one by one until he stops moving and then we can talk about whose blackmailing who.”  
  
“Wait…” Enoshima Junko mood entirely removed from the moment merely tilted her head to one side. “How do you know about me and Misogi?”  
  
“Your little suicide incident princess. The magazines reported it like you jumped into the river with your boyfriend to drown, just like Dazai.”

『It’s weird hearing a muscle head like you make a literary reference.』  
  
“Hey! If an idiot like you can make them, then so can I! Quit squirming around you little worm. A reserve course student like you should know better than getting involved above his station, to escape this hold you’d have to-”  
  
『Dislocate my arm…?』In a moment Kumagawa did so without hesitation, he looked like a doll with no joints sliding out of Sakakura’s hold. The moment his feet hit the floor he popped his shoulder back in.  
  
Sakakura raised his fists on instinct looking for a fight. He swung forward with all he had, not even bothering to hold back for a reserved course student. Kumagawa took the hit to the side of his face, he was sure he heard the sound of his jaw absorbing the hit but the fact that he had been hit did not even seem to register on his face. He turned his head, smiling into the place where Sakakura’s fist was still twisting into the side of his face. 『You really are a wonderful talent, it’s too bad I don’t fight fair.』

The next moment Sakakura saw Kumagawa’s hand clamp hard around his and pull him forward. He was expecting some kind of cheap shot blow taking advantage of the opening, but rather Kumagawa aimed a kick instead right in between his legs. Sakakura let out a high squeaking noise, but Kumagawa did not let up. 『When I fight big guy like you I could never defeat, I always! Aim for! The balls!』He said punctuating each exclamation point with a kick.  
  
Sakakura thought the worst day of his life was when Junko first blackmailed him and he had to go crawling back to Munakata. This might qualify for the second worst day of his life thought. 『Having to resort to such crude slapstick humor to win, really it’s my loss...』Kumagawa sighed, holding his hands in his pockets. He leaned forward to speak to Sakakura. Despite the anger he had shown in his kicking a moment ago there was no hidden malice in his face at all. 『You know, you remind me of Zenkichi-chan. He’s always trying to face and fight his own weakness so he can be good enough to be by Medaka-chan’s side, like he has to earn his place there. I don’t ever think Medaka-chan once thought of it that way.』  
  
“The hell are you…”

『If she didn’t want him by her side, she wouldn’t have him. She would reject him, just like she rejected me. That’s the kind of person she is. There’s no need for her to earn that place. You know, you seem like the type that hates your own weakness but that’s no good, if you want to hate weakness that’s fine but you should hate me instead. As I’m much weaker than you, the weakest person imaginable. If you have a hard time hating me, I’ll kick you in the balls every time. 』  
  
Kumagawa said before he turned around on his heel and left. Enoshima Junko ran to catch up with him, and wrapped her arm around the loop that his elbow made. When they left the building behind and walked amongst the campus, Junko spoke up. “Do you always gotta be the hero, Senpai?”

『Depends, do you always gotta be the pain?』  
  
“I have to wonder about your methods though. I don’t think scapegoating yourself and getting others to hate you to achieve some objective works as much as you think it does.”

『Junko, why are you causing trouble anyway? If you were bored you didn’t have to spend the past few days acting like an obsessive weirdo.』  
  
“Don’t you think it’d be perfect, if I could just split my personality in half. That way I could be the Junko that always has fun around you, and then the Junko who causes despair for others off to the side where you can’t see me.”

『I’d rather not, because I’d get jealous you see. I’m the one who wants to see every part of you, if I only saw your pleasant parts I wouldn’t be able to hate you anymore.』

“You’ve always got such a strange way of putting things. What do you mean you’d get jealous?”

『Ah, you know Yasuke-chan. I’m always jealous of him.』They were standing in front of a wall and suddenly Kumagawa unentangled his hand from hers, and started to close the distance between them. 『Because I saw it, I saw the moment you killed him, there was such love in that murder. From that moment I knew you were never going to show so much love again, he got to die in your arms suffocated by your love.』  
  
“Love…?” Enoshima Junko was surprised. To an outsider that should have just looked like a murder scene. She had not even detected he was there at that time, though if she remembered correctly Junkai showed her a glimpse of his memories of the scene.

『What are you saying that’s not a form of love? You shouldn’t seek to define love, everything is an acceptable form of love, killing is an acceptable form of love, and even dying is an acceptable form of love, I want to love you in every way but there’s two ways that I never can because I don’t wanna die....』  
  
As he stared deeper and deeper into her eyes.  
A deeper blue.  
More pure.

She pinched at the side of his cheeks. “Misogi, you’re totally Komaeda-ing me again.”

『It’s not nice to use his name in the form form a verb.』Kumagawa’s mood changed in a moment, as quickly as hers. His face was like still water again and he stepped back offering his arm to her once more.  
  
As they passed by a student run news stand, Junko swapped one of the magazines that caught her eye. She paged through all of it in less than five seconds. “They can’t seriously be saying that we’re dating.”

『But we are dating.』  
  
“That doesn’t mean the whole world needs to know about it. I’m a model you know, part of the fantasy is selling the idea of me as a girl you could date. Could you imagine their reactions if they found out I was dating some loser with no outstanding qualities.”

『As a loser with no outstanding qualities, wouldn’t it send them all into despair to know that they’re not available, and of all people they lost out to me?』  
  
“Yeah, but it’s not the good kind of despair unless it stokes my ego as well.”

『The battle between Junko’s ego, and her despair on her list of priorities is ever raging. Still, what do you have to complain about you were just blackmailing Sakakura-kun about his love life.』

“Yeah, but consequences aren’t supposed to apply to me. I never get punished that’s why I’m such a rotten brat.” Enoshima said, an equally rotten smile spreading across her face.

As they continued with their casual conversation, or whatever could be called casual for two such twisted people Kumagawa paused for a moment. 『Junko I forgot to ask something, how come you’re being so obsessive lately. It used to be that you kept me at arm’s length unless you go bored.』Kumagawa looked down at the JUNKO LOVE sweatshirt that he was weraing over his black blazer.  
  
“Don’t you know, I do everything obsessively, to the point of madness, to love is to devour-”

『Yeah, yeah whatever but you’ve been acting differently lately. Junko could it be...』Kumagawa tilted his head to the side. 『You don’t have any other friends?』  
  
“No. You got it wrong. You lost.”

『Poor Junko, she has less friends then the hated and despised minus. Izuru-chan and Makoto-chan. That’s two, which is infinitely bigger than zero.』  
  
“What’s with you befriending so many main characters?”

『I’m a negative foil. It’s only natural that I get closer to the main character, like the rival in shonen manga whose secretly friends with the main character all along. Come on, Junko I’ll help you with my superior friend making skills. It flatters me to be able to help an elite.』  
  
“Shut up.”

『Let’s go hit on girls!』  
  
Kumagawa said as he grabbed her by both of the shoulders and unwillingly began to push her forward.  
  
The first person they came across was a girl in a black uniform with a long skirt, she wore bookish glasses and her braids in twin tails. She looked to be the very picture of a quiet and elegant girl from the outside, until she opened her mouth at least.

“Hey what’s that smell? Oh, it’s just Fukawa-san.” Junko said, immediately applying perfurme to herself and striking a few poses as she did it.  
  
『That’s not nice, Junko. She probably has water related trauma, not everybody presents their symptoms in a beautiful way. 』  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai, why have you brought the big boobed menace before me. You’re a traitor to unpopular and ugly people.” Toko said, hissing from the other side of her book as she pulled it in front of her face like some kind of shield.

『Eh, eh? Take that back! I’m definitely unpopular! I’m hated! I’m despised! 』  
  
Junko crossed her arms over her breasts for emphasis to her chest. She really was a cruel girl. “I don’t know senpai weren’t you just bragging about having two whole friends?”  
  
“Two! You have way too many! Why is mister popular here trying to pretend like he’s one of us bullied loners? You’re like one of those idiots who romanticizes the struggle of a mentally unwell artist putting their illness into their craft.”

『Toko-chan isn’t that exactly what you do?』  
  
“Well yeah, but it’s not healthy when I do it either. Hmmph.” She said turning up her nose. At who it was hard to guess, probably everybody.

『Toko-chan aren’t you glad to see your senpai again? Weren’t you worried I might never come back.』  
  
“Oh, you were gone?” Toko tilted her head to the side, genuinely confused. “I thought you had just gone back to the reserve course.” Fukawa Toko was not a nice person.

『Well, the past doesn’t matter Toko-chan let’s become frie-』

“No.”  
  
『Awe, why not? 』  
  
“Because you read manga.”

Kumagawa Misogi had never looked so thoroughly insulted in his life. Even when he had launched into his tirade of self loathing, tearing the imaginary world apart did not he insult himself that much. However, he merely smiled the next moment and leaned over her shoulder. 『Toko-chan what’s that radio you’re listening to?』  
  
“Oh, I planted several bugs over the school to monitor things for Byakuya. I need to make sure if there’s trouble happening that he won't put himself in danger by getting involved.”

『He doesn’t really seem like the heroic type that will leap into danger the moment he sees someone in need.』

“Don’t you dare say that, Togami is a prince! The romantic ideal! He always does what’s best!”

『For himself maybe.』  
  
“Anyway, all I’m getting are reports of dead bodies showing up around the old school building.”

『Eh? The Old School Building? 』Kumagawa and Junko seemed to react at the same time, but Kumagawa was the dumbass so he repeated back the word in the form of a question.  
  
“I know what you’re thinking it wasn’t me. It was neither of the killer killer boyfriends either. Nor was it Munakata Kei-kun.”  
  
“Jeez, how many serial killers attend this school. It’s like they were asking me to burn it to the ground.” Junko commented in the background.  
  
“You’re a serial killer yourself. You’re the worst kind too, the ones with beautiful blonde hair and big boobs. How did nobody suspect you were evil to begin with?” Fukawa Toko shut her book for dramatic effect. “Either way we have nothing in common so please stop talking to me.”

『You’re right, Toko-chan. We're nothing alike. I don't even think you're that gloomy 』  
  
“What me? The sole disciple of sEdgar Allen Poe” Toko said, looking absolutely scathed as if somebody had thrown a dueling glove at her in one of her 1800s romantic period novels.

『I mean, don't you daydream about being a princess with Togami? Aren't all your stories lovey dovey?』  
  
“P-please, I only dream of such things because I'm so thoroughly miserable..”

『No, no, no, if you think about it you’ve turned all the pain from people in the past into a constructive talent. You're very succesful and proud of yourself, there's no way you can be a minus like me.』  
  
“N-n-n-no, I don’t want you to apologize. Listen to what I have to say. The way I'm acting with Byakuya is totally desperate, I'm a stalker, I'm the worst of the worst.”

『I mean, you haven’t even made it that far with Byakuya yet, right? It’s not like you steal his underwear and sniff it, or break into his house and listen to the sound of him sleeping. You just follow him around and follow the weird orders he gives you to make fun of you. You're not a creep it's more like you're an overeager child trying to please him, it's almost cute it's precocious, there's nothing creepy about it. You probably like keeping him at a distance, you’re not that serious about him.』  
  
At this.  
Fukawa Toko completely broke. She fell into disarray. It was like somebody had torn out the pages of her favorite novel, and then rearranged them in the wrong order. “That’s… No! I'm the worst of the worst, I'm not a happy person not at all!” Immediately, Fukawa Toko bit her own nail so hard that she snapped it in half causing her to see her own bloodied nail. SHe looked down and immediately lost consciousness.  
  
A moment later Jack stabbed a pair of scissors right into the book that Fukawa was reading a moment ago. Kumagawa found himself being chased around by Jack for bullying Toko. Enoshima Junko watched, laughing in the background. Both of them had completely failed to make a friend.  
  
“Stop struggling senpai! It only hurts to get stabbed from behind at first, then it feels good afterwards!”

『Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! 』

**😈**

 

Ensohima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi came across a familiar small silhouette. A girl wearing green hair in short pigtails, wearing a red skirt and the hope’s peak uniform. A special exception was made for her to join the high school early, class 79-B Towa Monaca. The girl had a despondent look on her face, and she was walking through the campus entirely alone not even noticing the other human beings around her. 

Kumagawa decided to greet her normally. She was a girl who had never been treated with any normal affectin after all.   
  
『Hey, Monaca-chan. 』  
  
Monaca immediately flinched, and then turned around glaring back at Kumagawa with disdain. “Hmmmmmm.”

『U-uh, Monaca-chan?』 Kumagawa had waved to her from afar, he felt awkward now. He was used to being hated, but for some reason Monaca's dull eyes of disinterest were too much for him. She looked at Junko for a moment and when she saw Junko was looking away, she did not even try to make eye contact. It was like she was resigned to it at this point.   
  
“Is that you, Kumagawa-san?”

『You suddenly remembered my name? You’re supposed to call me naked apron-senpai! What’s with that very open disdain you’re supposed to have a two faced personality! Smile and pretend to be friendly and then make fun of me behind my back! Please, I'm begging you!』Kumagawa Misogi yelled, gripping at the sides of his face. Enoshima Junko merely observed the interaction, saying nothing not even looking at Monaca.  
  
“Kumagawa-san, if you’re greeting me like a normal person, that means you’ve gotten boring. Did something happen?”

『Harsh! Don’t you know where I was for the past few months?』  
  
“Oh, I thought you just went to the reserve course and decided to stop bothering us.”

『Why do people keep saying that? 』  
  
Rather than banter with him, she turned her head back to glare at him one last time and then shrugged and kept walking forward. He had even set her up for a perfect insult. He felt crushing defeat, like a glacier had collapsed on him known as the cold shoulder. Truly, this is a world of ice Kumagawa thought again wanting to run back into the dream world that had been his only comfort.  
  
But he was annoying, and couldn't read the mood or a proper rejection so he just ran after her again instead. 『Hey you said you never liked my twisted personality!  You were always complaining!』  
  
“That was just me acting, so you’d do it more. Don’t you even know what a tsundere is? I can’t believe big sis Junko would even give the time of the day to someone who wasn’t aware of his basic anime tropes.”

『This isn't even tsundere you're just being a meanie and ignoring meeeee!』  
  
“You screwed it up right at the start. Now we can’t even turn this interaction into a funny bit of banter, the joke’s entirely ruined.”

『I messed up our act that badly! I’m that poor of a performer? 』  
  
“Your performance is always poor trust me Misogi.” Junko said snickering from the sidelines.

『Ssssh, there’s a middle schooler here you’re going to ruin her purity.』  
  
“She’s pure evil.”

『Well, I don’t want that pure evil to be ruined. Let’s not corrupt her with any kind of good, like talk of how good I am in -Hey, hey wait Monaca-chan!』

“No, my naked apron-senpai is dead! Remove the twisted personality from Kumagawa-san and there’s nothing left but a tick clinging to big sis Junko. Sucking the blood from her breasts!”

『Why would I be choosing to hang there of all places as a tick?』  
  
“Guys like you go on and on again about how they have to be strong to fit other's expectations and suffer over and over because of it but nobody expects anything from you in the first place, disappear please.”

『No, don’t! Junko’s said that to me a hundred times, but when you say it I really do want to disappear!』  
  
“Huh? I told you to disappear and you’re still here! You can’t even do that right?” Monaca said finally turning her head around after fleeing from Kumagawa the entire time. “So, what’s up with you, you suddenly seem pretty serious compared to the last time I saw you. It’s unsuited to you.”

『Serious, huh? A lot of stuff’s happened you know. Hey… where’s Kokichi-chan?』  
  
“He said he’s busy. I’m sure a lot of stuff is happening for him too.” She yawned as if tired. "He said he had to go abroad to help his secret organization, but knowing him that can literally mean anything."

『Ah, Kokichi-chan doesn’t like adults either right? Nor do you, because Junko manipulated you into hating them.』  
  
“I did no such thing, all the gross nasty adults did all the work for me.” Junko said in the background once more, making a deliberate effort to ignore Monaca.

『Monaca-chan, when do you think a person grows up? 』

“Why would I care about something like that, you always say such boring things. Are you trying to trick my beloved big sis Junko into growing up? If you change anything about her perfect I'll kill you.” She turned her head away from him and finally started walking off in the opposite direction. “I don’t really care about kids who want to grow up, but, what’s really annoying is adults who act like they’re kids.”

『Oh, Junko I think she was insulting you.』  
“No she was totes insulting you.”  
  
Those two said, immediately side eyeing one another. Kumagawa stood in the middle of the campus, most of the students going about their daily lives completely ignoring him as usual. He realized he had not even gotten to the part of asking Monaca to be Junko’s friend. He had lost once again.  
  
“Really, Misogi. You should know better. I mean nobody expects someone like me to have friends, I’m like so above human connection, the words revere, and worship suit me more I don't need individual connection being loved by everybody is a good enough substitute for me. See, everybody in the crowd right now is averting their eyes from us, because it’s so unexpected and despair inducing that we’d be a couple that they don’t even want to acknowledge it.”

『The despair inducing couple.』  
  
“That’s why all hope does is reinforce the status queue. This academy too is just built on status queue, they don’t want to acknowledge hard issues, or change, or anything that might make them miserable head on so they all cling to happiness and avert their eyes from problem children. Ie. You.”

『I guess I should learn to read the atmosphere, huh? 』  
  
“Yeah, there’s no point in having a guy like you around that makes everything worse, the entire world is basically saying in agreement that you’re not needed.”

Kumagawa Misogi knew she was egging him on. Push somebody to the absolute extremes and hope they show you something amazing. He had not forgotten the central string, the most tightly wound string of their relationship no matter how strange she had started acting recently. That no matter what the two of them were always in competition against each other.

『You know Junko if you want to spread despair, I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong. I want you to have fun, so I’ll let you do as you like, but since you can’t stop yourself if you go too far I’ll punish you. 』  
  
“You’ll punish me?” Enoshima Junko grabbed her sides and started to laugh at the thought. He really was so brazen, he always said the stupidest things and the most interesting things at the same time. Nobody could make her laugh easier. “Punish me? Enoshima Junko-chan? What kind of punishment are you going to give me that I won’t enjoy?”  
  
Now she just sounded like she was flirting.  
What a trashy woman, really.

Suddenly, Kumagawa took a deep breath. He screamed from the darkest pits of his stomach, which was quite a great metaphorical distance as Kumagawa was the type of character you would describe as having and unfathomable and bottomless darkness hidden within him.

『ENOOOOOOSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA JUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNKOOOOOOOOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!』

Kumagawa screamed, in the central plaza of the school, causing everybody who was talking past them and ignoring them to suddenly stop.  
  
“Huh… What are you?”

『IIIIIIIIIIII KUUUUUUUUMAAAAAAAGAAAAAAWAAAAAAAA MIIIIIIIIISOOOOOOGIIIII OF THE RESERVE COURSE LOVE ENOSHIMA JUNKO. THE ULTIMATE FASHIONISTA! THE GIRL WHOSE WAY OUT OF MY LEAGUE! 』  
  
“Sh-shut up you!”

『I LOVE YOUR SMILE WHEN YOU’RE ENOYING YOURSELF! I LOVE YOUR ALWAYS SHARP NAILS! I LOVE HOW BRILLIANT YOU ARE, I CAN ALWAYS SEE ON YOUR FACE WHEN YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT SOMETHING! I LOVE HOW FUN YOU ARE TO TALK TO! I LOVE YOUR WEIRD ASS LAUGH!』  
  
She started to beat her hands against his chest uselessly.  
Enoshima Junko was constantly battling between her need to worship despair and her own ego.

 『AND MOST OF ALL I LOVE YOUR HUGE BOOBS!』

When she had finally managed to push him over, Kumagawa Misogi fell back laughing. He looked up at her, his smile unbroken no matter what kind of revenge she was going to deal to him next. 『Junko, see! It’s not nice when everybody else knows about your love!』  
  
Punishment was something best endured together.  
That was the conclusion Kumagawa Misogi came to.

He had spun the wheel of human interaction over, over, and over again until he reached that result.  
However, it was only inevitable with his luck that he’d spin again and get an unfavorable result. Who knew if he’d be able to profess to such wisdom when that time came around.  
Kumagawa’s philosophy was something that was always changing to adapt just like he was.  
What?  
Shut up, I’m not bitter.

 

**😈**

 

Matsuda Yasuke had gone to the old school building looking for Zenkichi. He was not planning on apologizing but maybe Zenkichi could just punch him in the face and do a favor for both of them.  
  
Hoewver when he arrived he found the building suspiciously empty. Apparently there was still guards being employed at this place so it was strane that the whole building was silent. Then suddenly he saw a guard turn the corner, only to suddenly collapse. His arm was separated from the rest of his body.  
  
At that moment Matsuda Yasuke froze up. Unwillingly, he suddenly remembered the corpses that he hid underneath the bed. How cold they were in his hands. How he had been the first to discover them. How he had been the first to discover his mom. Her feet weren’t touching the floor, why didn’t they touch the floor.  
  
“Ruki, ruki, ruki, ruki, ruki, ruki, ruki, ruki, ruki…”  
  
Junko is killing the guards in the old school building again. That was all he could think of in this moment. She’s using Mukuro to do it.  
  
Ruki.  
The Kanji for cut.  
Specifically to cut with a sword.  
A sword can only cut.  
Pekoyama? She should still be with Fuyuhiko helping his rehabilitation.  
Mukuro, Mukuro, Mukuro as he saw the shadowy figure all he could think of was Mukuro.  
  
However the figure that stepped out was a girl with a similiar build to Ikusaba Mukuro, she wore a red uniform but had her face entirely covered with a hood. It looked like one of the outfits that belonged to an old ninja village.  
  
Suddenly she rushed forward at Yasuke. “No need to give me your name, I don’t plan on telling you mine.”  
  
She immediately went for the kill, raising her sword up wildly in the air.  
  
However at that moment somebody jumped in front of Matsuda. A girl breathing heavily with a redeened face, despite how weak her body looked she was glaring forward with the defiant eyes of a guard dog.  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro had checked herself out of the hospital. She blocked the sloppy sword wielding of the other girl with a knife. “Sorry please forgive me.”  
  
“What are you trying to save your life? Don’t try, there’s no point.”  
  
“Ah, no this isn’t me trying to save your life. I apologize for my wrong doing. For pretending to hide my strength and concealing my presence so I could make a cool entrance like this, I apologize from the bottom of my heart.”  
  
“Interesting you may name yourself.”  
  
“Ikusaba Mukuro, Student council general affairs manager.”

“Ah, I knew it was you. Ruki, Ruki, Ruki, Ruki, Ruki…” The girl started to get excited then and at that moment Mukuro caught why she kept chanting the same kanji over and over again. The same kanji had been tattooed on her tongue, a single character, to cut with a sword. She twisted her body around and tried to strike forward with the sword again, and Ikusaba Mukuro jumped back.

The girl threw her body around and twisted it she dragged her sword across the floor and without a moment of hestiation cut at Mukuro’s legs. Mukuro had to jump into the air to avoid it, and the girl quickly grabbed at her shirt and pulled her forward to aim at her head.  
  
Mukuro slipped out of her black blazer, and let the sword cut it. She looked with fleeting regret at her new outfit that was now completely destroyed. Back to wearing a white button up shirt. “I don’t get it, why are you killing people, why do you want to fight?”  
  
“Why? Ikusaba I used to be such a huge fan of your character. You were so much cooler when you were the kind of girl who could fight without hesitation, without asking, why, why, why! That’s the opposite of your character, why would you need to abandon your will to kill?” She stood holding her sword again. “It doesn’t matter the weapon, or the method, a killer only needs to kill. You’re not even using the sharp side of that knife at me. If you abandon that, you’ll lose your character motivation, you’ll be empty inside! Makoto’s hope, Kumagawa’s bonds, Junko’s despair, none of it can fill you up.”  
  
“This knife… was given to be by Kumagawa for my birthday.” Mukuro said as she brought the knife closer to her. It was covered in horrible looking stains like someone had dripped acid on the metal.  
  
“You’re at a disadvantage using a knife against a sword. The Ultiamte Soldier should know of a tactical disadvantage that obvious!”

“Hm? Since when did I get a harsher critic than Junko.” Mukuro said in her typical dry voice as she raised up her empty hand. “Then fine, this will be my other sword. I have a two sword style now.”

The masked girl gave up on talking and rushed at her. Her sword collided with Mukuro’s knife several times, but each time Mukuro noticed something. Even though she had pulled her gloves on to fight, and even though she was blocking the hits suddenly she saw cuts opening up on her body.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“It’s called a style.”  
  
“A fighting style?”  
  
“No, a style. Ruki, ruki, the kanji cut. When I say it your body believes it’s been cut even though I’ve never touched you. Fiction has the power to change reality you know, that’s why… a character like you should stop being so disappointing.” She outmanuevered Mukuro and took a cheap shot grabbing her by the hair and slamming her head against the wall. She took the knife that was a precious gift, and threw it as far away as possible because the blade was dull, because it was no use for cutting.  
  
“What are you doing? Wishing to beheld? As long as the sword can cut there’s no need for it to be held.” Cuts appeared all over her body, as the masked fighter threw her to the ground. On her arms, on her legs, and even her midsection tearing the clean white button up shirt she was wearing, and her new uniform. “Maybe you’re not a beast anymore, but you’ve become something far worse. You’re a beast without her fangs you’re useless. You gave up killing but it's not like you gained anything, just a hollow, hollow, hollow, self loathing mess!”  
  
“I still have….”  
  
“I still have my legs right? Are you going to show me determination at last moment. That’s not the kind of character you are, Zenkichi and Makoto maybe but you were supposed to be an untouchable soldier who never once got cut, now you’re covered in cuts.”  
  
Suddenly, to interrupt her speech from behind Ikusaba Mukuro threw her body, digging her teeth right into the girl’s shoulders. With everything she had, with the last part of her body she could move, she bit down hard. “Well instead of blades, they’re canines.”  
  
A dog who had lost her fangs.  
Just a bitch who had been beaten too hard by Enoshima Junko.  
Who had been tamed by Kumagawa Misogi’s kindness.  
Who was spoiled until her fangs became dull by Naegi Makoto’s hopes.  
Perhaps she was all of those things, but no matter what she would still be a wolf.  
  
She bit hard, tearing flesh out. The other girl slowly turned her head around, as part of her mask was torn away from Mukuro’s wild biting. At that exact moment, the girl screamed out. “It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts! Please stop!” Then suddenly she changed her tone. “If you keep biting like that, you’ll leave a hickey.” It’s embarrassing!”    
  
Matsuda Yasuke’s jaw dropped.  
He just had to play the straight man in every situation, huh? There just had to be a comedy beat?  
People are dying!  
  
"Fine, Matsuda-kun. I won't kidanp you now. It's n-not like I wanted to kidnap you anyway, idiot! You'll have to find out about the unfathomable darkness of the Kurokami family all on your own!"   
  
The girl pushed Ikusaba Mukuro away and ran off, leaving the man still bleeding out on the floor. Mukuro moved to pursue, but her legs gave out under her again. It seemed she was not Zenkichi after all somebody who could probably stand on pure determination after this point.  
  
Yasuke held his arm out, catching her before she fell. “Really, you just got out of the hospital now you’re trying to go back again. You really are a dumbass.”  
  
“Thank you, Yasuke-chan.”  
  
Circumstances change so quickly without meaning. He refused to believe, Ikusaba Mukuro brought herself out of her fever because of the things that he had said. He was simply getting things off of his mind for his own sake.  
  
But still…  
A chapter of human interaction, seemingly random.   
Good interactions, bad ones, the wheel spun without caring, and it would always keep spinning whether you wanted to or not.   
Just like it was impossible to completely be close to another human being.  
It was also impossible to separate yourself away from them, to distance yourself entirely from the worlds of others.   
  
“This wheel that spins us around, just this once it spun in my favor. That only means something terrible is going to happen next.”  
  
“Oh, you totally sounded like Komaeda-senpai right there.”  
  
“Don’t compare him to a guy like me! That’s mean to Komaeda!”  
  
That's right I'm competing in the low self esteem compettition with Komaeda and Kumagawa. Wish me luck. 


	13. I Have No Words to Say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Oakyvii on tumblr!

Kurokami Medaka was a human girl.  
  
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi her childhood friend since she was two years old had never believed otherwise. Perhaps at one point he had put too much faith in her, perhaps he had used her as a guidepost but even then he had never doubted her humanity.  
He knew too, and complained about it more than anyone else that Kurokami Medaka being a human girl lacked an understanding of a human heart. Perhaps one of the reasons he complained so much was because as the person always around her, she still never once seemed to understand what his feelings were. As he came into contact with Kuzuryuu and Matsuda though he learned that this was more and more common than he thought.  
  
Human beings were such awkward things. Zenkichi still had no idea why good intentions were not enough, why everybody wanting to make each other happy could not simply make it possible. Fuyuhiko wished for Pekoyama’s happiness more than anything else, Pekoyama wished for Fuyuhiko’s happiness more than anything else. They both made each other miserable. Then there was him and Kurokami Medaka, he wished for her happiness more than anything else.  
  
He never knew if she felt the same. Though, that was because Medaka herself did not know if she felt the same. Yes, it was not that Kurokami Medaka did not understand other people, true that frustrated him to no end, but it was that she did not understand herself. That was what tore himself apart inside.  
  
He wanted her to come to understand her own heart. To realize she had a human heart too. That was his wish, no that was his desire. He was still a teenage boy after all, he could not help but hope that heart would come to love him.  
  
Or rather loved him. He stepped off the platform. There was a rope closing around his neck. There was something he knew more than anything else too. Since he was two years old, he had clung to the frills of Kurokami Medaka’s skirt. The reason he was such a special existence was that he just happened to be orbiting around such a brilliant star. He was an ordinary guy. He was unworthy of her.  
  
He had known from the start he could not live without Kurokami Medaka, but she could live without him. That was why he had decided in this killing game to sacrifice himself and let her advance to the next round. He was not attempting to play the hero, or main character, not anymore. His selfish decision, because he knew Kurokami Medaka would come to the conclusion that she was the one who needed to sacrifice herself so he made that choice for her.  
  
Then suddenly he felt something pull tighter around his neck. His neck was burning like fire, and somehow he was burning and drowning at the same time, the intense pressure of his body beared down on his shoulders. He wanted to struggle against it but as well built as his body was it refused to move. He felt like a puppet suspended on strings. He had died once before but it was instantaneous, and he woke up in a dream afterwards. This was different, it was slow, he could feel the life seeping out of him. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi had always burned so brightly, he never felt it before, such a strong numbness, it was going to devour him, he was going to disappear. _Of course I’m going to disappear, I’m hanging myself._ He thought, and his last thoughts were of Komaeda. This sensatin of dying, of being eaten up, this terrible sensation, _I’ll die, I’ll die, I’ll die, Shit, I’ll die, So scared, I’ll die._ Was that what his close friend who resembled the reaper felt all the time?  
  
Then suddenly, Zenkichi’s eyes peeled open. He was no longer on Jabbewock island, but in a medical room in the neurology building, bandages were wrapped around his neck and he was only dressed from the waist down. “Everyone… Um… What was I…?” He felt a lingering sense of regret, like a sad dream he had just woke up from and forgotten about.  
  
“Don’t move so suddenly now, Zenkichi. Your wounds have only just healed, and your body has been stationary for at least three months. It’s likely your muscles have atrophied.”  
  
Even though he was told not to, Zenkichi sat up on his own. What a stubborn brat, really. It’s in shonen manga that stubbornness is confused for determination, that’s why I prefer Seinen. “I see… Then that game, so you’ve won Medaka-chan. Congats… That’s great for you. Compared to that I went in to help you save Kumagawa, but I just became a hostage instead. What the hell am I doing…”

 _Well, it certainly isn’t something we should all hold hands and shout about._ Yasuke Matsuda sat in the background, hands in his pockets. While the world destroyers were still at work he was the only one who could monitor Zenkichi’s condition when he came out of the dream. _Come on Kurokami, you’re the one who has to comfort him. My chest isn’t good enough to comfort anybody… it’s empty now…_ he thought, and before he could get too poetic _and I’m way too damn skinny to have any tits._

Suddenly Kurokami Medaka moved placing her hands on her hips. “Ha ha ha! Sorry about this time, Zenkichi! Well, we all have those moments. Now! The event is over so let’s go home!”  
  
Kurokami Medaka had been tending to HItoyoshi Zenkichi’s bedside every day. It was part of what had delayed her rampage until three months later at the start of the new semester, however… _jeez the first time you talk to him in three months and you sound like a greeting card._

Hitoyoshi Zenkichi paused for a moment staring at her smile. Kurokami Medaka’s true smile, he was not greeted by the smile of a beast, or a haughty woman standing above all others, no waking up to see the smiling face of a girl you liked it wasn’t too bad. He closed his eyes and smiled with his whole mouth. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go home, Medaka-chan. To our Hope’s Peak Academy.”

Those two were basically a greeting card couple. If Naegi and Mukuro were the heroes, then somehow Medaka and Zenkichi existed in a realm of the heroes beyond heroes. They were the ideals. Then at the very bottom of the totem pole was me, Mr. Bitter.

He was a student fo Sandbox Academy, and yet he said that so shamelessly. They were supposed to go home after their school was fixed and somehow they still ended up here. Well, school was not a building or even a name, but rather it was a group of people you saw every day willingly or unwillingly.  
  
The summer trip came to an end. Medaka understood that Junko had a human heart, and she realized that she too had a human heart. Human weakness, and human despair which had always seemed to be such unnecessary emotions to he she started to value. Thus, Medaka’s rampage on Hope’s Peak Academy began as she dedicated herself to trying every school club, every activity, and every hobby possible in order to see which one would interest her.  
  
The chains around Medaka’s heart were broken, she was free and clear. Now that everyone was out of the program, they all simply wished to return things to the way “they always were”. The status queue that Enoshima Junko maligned so much, but even in a few months their precious academy had changed.  
  
Even with a new student council lead by two bright suns, it seemed to be sliding back down into decline. People in the academy were getting the feeling that it was inevitable, like the fall of Rome. Of course there were others who had always been aware of the academy’s true nature in the first place, as simply a research institution masquerading as a school, Yasuke Matsuda had never been able to fall in love with the image of the school the way Zenkichi and Makoto had. He had no particular affection for his classmates, nor did he feel any strong admiration of hope. Read: Bitter.  
  
However, there were still people fighting to go back to those days. What days though? Happy days? I was never a part of them. Okay I’ll stop bitching narrator mode. Several months later, in the present day of the story Zenkichi had finally come out of rehabilitation for his atrophied muscles and was walking on campus again.  
  
The last thing he remembered of his relationship with Medaka was the two of them kissing (seriously why do I have to narrate everybody else’s love story, oh right punishment) and the love letter he left behind for her in the form of a suicide note. He still had no idea how she would react to that, whether they would start lovey dovey days as a couple of simply go back to normal.  
  
He had been talking about just that matter on his daily patrol with student council secretary, Munakata Kei. “No, no, things aren’t back to normal Hitoyoshi-kun. You do realize out of all people, you proposed to Kurokami-san? So even if you are here back in the academy you can’t say that you will have the same relationship with her as before.” The boy who loved killing Munakata, seemed to be quite the romanticist.  
  
“Ahhh, you’re right Munakata-senpai, but after dying, getting hospitalized and all that I haven’t really gotten the chance to properly talk to her about it. She wanted to help with my rehabilitation you know but Medaka-chan’s not the best at being gentle or helping with slow learners. She once told the track team their problem was they were running too slow and they needed to run faster, so my mom kicked her out.”  
  
“It isn’t good that she might somehow leave the confession itself uncertain?” Munakata said, tilting his head back to Zenkichi. They spotted her at the head of the crowd walking towards the main building, as usual the crowd was splitting around her to avoid her. “Oh, speak of the devil, it’s Kurokami-san, good timing. How about you properly talk to her about it now?”

“Haha! You’re right! Hey! Medaka-chan!” Zenkichi’s face reddened in anticipation, right under the glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose. Did they look cool? Did he look cool? He should have started dressing in a suit like Makoto all the time, damnit!

Suddenly, Kurokami Medaka turned around her gaze ice cold. “Please don’t talk to me in such a familiar manner, Hitoyoshi-kun. Also from today onwards don’t come close within ten meters of me.” A sudden cold snap so noticable, every student standing in the vicinity started to shiver.  
  
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi’s face  and his sharp eyebrows pinched in an expression of pure shock, the glasses falling off his face before he caught them with his hand. His face stayed exactly like that until he got to the student council building.  
  
At which point Naze understood what he had gone through simply by the look in his face. “Ah… It’s probably that.” She gestured with he hand to the side as if lecturing. “The way you confessed was pretty bad. You just said “let’s get married”, see Medaka-chan is completely an old fashioned type. She’s probably thinking it’s taboo to go out before marriage or something. In other words, at the time Kurokami Medaka received your proposal, for her, holding hands and kissing with you were out of the question.A lso, she doesn’t want to see her partner face to face. You could’ve just gone easy and said “let’s go on a date” but Zen-chan’s the type to get caught up in the moment and act cool.”  
  
“I was trying to sacrifice myself to save everyone.”  
  
“You were acting cool.”  
  
When Naze cut him off his head collapsed forward onto the desk, hiding his pathetic face from the world. Smoke ran up from his head and it looked like somebody had grabbed the back of his head and smashed it there.  
  
“Truly, Kurokami-san is a difficult person to fall in love with.” Munakata spoke with wisdom, for a guy who only loved murder anyway. He had not even fallen in love with Ikusaba Mukuro like the two killer killer boys so where was all this coming from? Actually, now that you think about it those who give the most level headed advice are those who have never been in relationship at all. The wisdom of a fellow loner, Munakata my heart cries out in admiration to you. If I had a heart anymore that was. It was ripped out by red nails. “I thought the problem of her becoming more distant the closer you got to her was resolved though.”  
  
“Nah, this is something different from that.” The vice president Naze said.  
  
“I think it’s fine, no? It’ll be like a classic romance. It’s just about your endurance until marriage.” Togami said without thinking or looking up from his paperwork. The moment he did his face turned sour. “That sounded like something Toko would say, did I get cooties from her? Have I been infected?”

“You say it as if it’s so easy, Togami-senpai. Besides you’re not sure if everything you said is true or not. Maybe Medaka-chan only feels obligated to say yes because I left my proposal in the form of a tacky note, she’s probably regretting it and is avoiding me now…” His mouth mouth twitched back and forth wobbling as his eyebrows knitted together.

Toko who had been doing a poor job of hiding behind a potted plant, and was not actually a member of the student council and only there because Togami was, suddenly stepped out and leaned on Togami. “I don’t think there’s a need to worry, HItoyoshi-kun. Not too long ago I was following Byakuya in the hallway and… Kurokami, seemed in very high spirits and was excited about it.” She immediately shivered. “It was terrifying, I hate the happiness of such beautiful people.”  
  
Togami looked up finally. “Toko, stop leaning on me.”  
  
“Byakuya, you just said the words classic romance. Did you finally read one of my novels?”

“I would rather you stab out my eyes with a pair of your scissors then be subjected to that.”

“No, don’t say that Jack might think you’re flirting with her! She’s a sadist and I’m a masoschist, so if you want to flirt with me you have to tell me how much you want to hurt me!”  
  
At that moment Naze stood up and started to walk out of the room. “Well I’ve reached my limit of observing heterosexual confusion for the day. As a scientist there’s not much more I can add. Though, your situation is probably less of a mess than you think it is in comparison to Togami-kun’s at least.” Then afterwards she muttered much faster. “Plus I have to hang out with Gundham and Koga.”  
  
It seemed she was still shy about aditting she had friends. “Oh, Naze. Since when did you start going without your bandages?”

The only bandage she wore was one in the corner of her forehead stuck thee to cover the knife wound she had acquired from continually stabbing herself in the face in order to tie her bandages up. She was wearing her hair in a short bob and her face was clear as day, though she still had the eyes of an all too slippery eel, or perhaps some other kind of bottomfeeder. “I dunno… I just started to all of the sudden, it’s easier to get up in the morning without having to put all of that on. You know Gundham’s scar is just a temporary tattoo? Shut up, okay!”

“It seems trios are popular these days. Hmm, Shiranui, Medaka-chan and I should try hanging out as a trio sometime.” Zenkichi said, before letting his head sink back onto the desk. “Except Medaka-chan hates Shiranui, and she hates me now too. We’re never going to be a trio.”  
  
Basically the summary of that whole scene, HItoyoshi Zenkichi will remain a virgin forever. Join the club. No really, I wouldn’t mind becoming a monk with him and retreating up to the mountains together.

😈

 

As a part of her rampage, Kurokami was enjoying the martial arts section of the school today. She grabbed Nabeshima and Akune by the collar of their gis and spun them around her laughing madly. “Ahahaahhahahaha!”  
  
As she threw them to the side suddenly she was attacked from behind. The ogre Oogami Sakura appeared and slammed her fist down with everything she had, apparently she had been learning sneak attacks from Nabeshima.  
  
The three of them had been bitter rivals for the better part of a year, but apparently Medaka was a common enemy they could all unite against. After Zenkichi had done it in front of everybody, a lot of the Ultimates were inspired to be the first person to beat Medaka in their specific area of Ultimate Talent.  
  
Of course Medaka saw the blow coming and blocked it bare handed, and then somehow threw the much larger girl over her shoulder easily. Afterward, with a towel around her neck she exhaled like she had been holding one breath the entire time. “Phew! I worked up a good sweat! As expected of the student teacher duo, the king of foul play, the prince, and the ogre. Even I was only able to keep it to a draw! Actually it’s quite regrettable.”  
  
No victory had been achieved yet. Both Nabeshia and Akune were a little bit terrified what would happen if Sakura and Medaka went all out against one another. Ikusaba Mukuro had even imagined such a fight once, and then hoped desperately her sister did not get any ideas.

“Ku ku ku, well that’s good for you.” The catlike senpai said, as she wiped her face keeping her eyes closed. “I was afraid of you smashing a senpai’s honor and had a bad cold sweat. Seems like she kept her title for strongest in the world, eh Sakura?”  
  
“Kurokami Medaka is the strongest in the school maybe…” That girl was used to standing head and shoulders above others. The appearance of that extremely strong woman from nowhere transferring into her school had done something on her pride as a martial artist. Ultimates were much more sensitive than one might be led to believe after all. “The strongest in the world is… its an adult. That red headed contract Aikawa Jun. Perhaps when you grow up you’ll take the title from her.”  
  
The prince Akune had other priorities however. “You said you were getting married to Hitoyoshi-kun? For me it’s a really complicated feelings but… First let me say congratulations Medaka-san.”  
  
“Hahahahah, thanks Kouki! As for me since I won’t be able to meet up with Zenkichi at all, I feel embarrassed.”  
  
Akune put on a fake smile. _The embarrassed one is probably HItoyoshi-kun. He’s the only one between the two of you who has an ounce of shame._  
  
Medaka was off in her own little world. The princess was probably imagining her fairy tale ending with the pauper boy. Another strange point of comparison between those two princesses Junko and Medaka staring at each other from opposite ends of the looking glass, they both had the same taste in men, ratty paupers who try too hard. “Well, it’s just a matter of enduring two years until Zenkichi turns eighteen. We’ll get married at the same time as graduation. And afterwards, we’ll get all lovey dovey. Still, you three make a wonderful trio I hope you’ll continue to get along.”  
  
She was just about to ask how Akune had found out about such a thing. Appaently, rumors were spreading around the school right now like wildfire causing unrest among the students, that on top of the Utlimate Hunt, the increased news coverage, and the reports of staff members going missing again. Medaka thought it might have just been Shiranui who spread the rumor of her engagement, as she had a tendency to blame Shiranui for everything that annoyed her like when she stubbed her toe in the morning. The worst best friend had been quite a menace to her in the past.  
  
She saw a black silhouette walking across the school grounds. Most people ran away from trouble but Medaka ran towards it, that was what made her alike to Junko. She left the other students behind and chased after him. It was hardly a romantic first meeting, instead of behind cherry blossom trees it was under the shadows of dead trees that had still yet to recover in spring.  
  
“We finally meet.” When she caught up to him, he turned and stuffed his hand into his pockets like he had been expecting her. “Tsurubami Hato's legacy."  
  
She had been told of a man of such description a few days ago. His black hair was combed back in a way that made him look like he had twin cat ears on the top of his head, his eyes were dull and lifeless, and just like the dead tree he was tall with long stretched out limbs that made him look more emaciated then imposing. “Kaiki… Deishuu.”  
  
“Ahhhhh…” His angular eyebrows narrowed as catlike eyes stared at her. “You know me? I see. Did Ikusaba tell you? Or perhaps Kumagawa? That will make this fast. The lesson for me here is you can never know when a relationship will be useful.”  
  
Ikusaba was strong, and she was taken off guard by this person. She had learned awhile ago, winning was more than just a matter of strength. There were even some situations where it was better not to fight n her own with strength. She turned on her heel and decided she would run and get someone else rather than take on the unknown style user alone.  
  
“Hey, hey. Wait, Hato’s legacy. I’ve been waiting for you.” Suddenly, Kurokami felt a hand reaching out towards her, it was like one of those gnarled, twisted and long branches had come to reach out, or perhaps a shadow lengthening. She decided not to chance it and took off running with the Kurokami Phantom. Even if Kirigiri Jin had asked her to stop breaking the sound barrier on school grounds due to the complaints of several students with damaged eardrums.

Her body was in peak condition, unlike the others she had only spent a week in the neo-world program. Not only that but the last week she had been playing with (harassing) every single athletic club at the school bringing her to the very limit. It was not a brag, nor an exaggeration to say Kurokami Medaka was the wind! Actually, a bird!  
  
However, Kaiki was out to make chicken sashimi.  
“Don’t just start running at the speed of sound. It’s dangerous. I’m an old man you’ll hurt my hearing.” The supposed old man however, had already overtaken her and stood in front of her.  
  
She revealed her momentum enough to tear the average achilles tendon, and spun on her heel thinking this time she would overtake him.  
  
She was treated to the sight of Kaiki’s awkward running, holding his arms like one of those barbie dolls whose arms lock into shapes, catch up from behind and move ahead of her again. “I have arthritis you know, and you do this to me. What a tomboy you are…”  
  
“You only look like you’re in your thirties why do you act like such an old man?”  
  
“I’ve been an old man since I was a teenager.” That man said, with a strange sense of pride.  
  
Kurokami ran to the point of exhaustion, and still Kaiki was in front of her.  
She had lost.  
After a week of destroying every physical talent at their own game, she had lost to an old con man who had a body constitution that made him look like a vampire.  
  
“How… how did you outrun me?”  
  
“Hmm, the problem was you were running too slow. You need to run faster.” He replied in a voice so dry it was a crack in the earth in the middle of the desert. “Tsk, what are we going to do with you? Are you really Hato’s legacy?”  
  
His hand looked like the claw of a raven reaching forward, she was afraid she was going to be snatched away. She wonder when the last time she had come across such a gloomy aura. Did this man lay a rose on Edgar Allan Poe’s grave once a year or something to cultivate that mystique?  
  
It was familiar, so unbearably familiar. But she was the sun she did not spend much time looking at shadows.  
She of all people, flinched when he reached for her. The reason was simple, Medaka was not used to losing. She was a sore loser. She had only lost once before this and had a mental breakdown.  
  
His hand grabbed her by the back of her shirt, and he lifted her up like a kitten. Medaka mewled and her eyes watered. Was this how Kumagawa felt all the time? This disappointment? No wonder he was such a baby.  
  
“What? That’s quite the expression you have there. Like I just said, we’ve finally met. You were otherwise busy before this point so I’ve been waiting at this school.”  
  
“Waiting? For me?”  
  
“THat’s right… Actually, that’s a lie.” As if suddenly changing his mind, he spun around on his black dress shoes, and the twin tails of his coat trailing behind him he walked the other direction after putting in all that effort to chase her down.  
  
“...”  
  
“What’s wrong? Follow me.”  
  
“Zenkichi told me not to fight on my own.”  
  
“You were going for help? You must have a considerate friend if he said that to you. One would usually tell a strong person to fight all their battles on their own because they’re able to. The lesson for you here is that, there are problems that can’t be solved by running.”  
  
Medaka had never watched anime, so she missed out on a valuable opportunity for an evangelion reference.  
  
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to con you or use you. I simply want to speak to you, Hato’s legacy. It isn’t the sorted thing you can say in the middle of school like this, so I’m only inviting you to a coffee shop somewhere. Normally this would be impossible but ust today, just for you, I’ll spend money treating you to coffee.”

“Who is Hato?” She finally asked. It seemed the obvious thing to ask, but she missed out on obvious things.  
  
“They didn’t tell you your own mother’s name?”  
  
Hato.  
The name of her mother who died of childbirth. The sacrifice to bring her into the world. The first person she had destroyed. The reason she thought it was wrong for her to be born.  
There was a student run cafe where TeruTeru Hanamura was the chef. He was terrified of Medaka so they got a discount. Rather than coffee, they were eating meat.

“You should eat meat when you are young, as long as they have meat people can be happy, Hato’s child.”  
  
He spoke casually across the table. He was making a good point, meat did make her happy. She wanted to eat more of it. However, she was still in shock from hearing that name.  
  
She had no mother. Her father controlled her with money, and cultivated her to be a perfect heir after generations of breeding. The other father that had taken care of her, had died brutally because of her.  
  
She did not have the best track record with adults.  
  
“You don’t have to keep calling me that strange name, Hato’s child.”  
  
“I see. However, I resent calling you Kurokami.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I’m petty like that.”  
  
Join the club.  
  
“That’ll mean calling you Medaka, is that alright with you?”  
  
“Better than Hato’s legacy.”  
  
“Well then, Medaka eat your meat.” Medaka did not have the best track record of being suspicious of others either, but she found it strange that this man was the same one who attacked Mukuro. He seemed like a surly but kind relative.  
  
Medaka decided she was at least going to eat enough meat to bankrupt this man. It was his fault for agreeing to treat her. Revenge for Mukuro. As she shoved it into her mouth she spoke with her mouth open. “Well then, what did you want of Medaka?”  
  
“Yes. That’s right. Now that you mention it, that’s right. I’m sure you’ve already realized this Medaka, but I knew your mother. Well actually before this you’ve met you uncle haven’t you?”  
  
“Uncle?”  
  
“Well never mind, I suppose your family situation is complicated. I never got along with your uncle, but your mother helped me out quite a lot. We met by chance when I was even younger than you. We kept in touch until university. Well… she was like a tutor. I was the last person to see her alive. Hato asked me… to take care of you if something happened to her.”  
  
“My mother asked that of you?”

“In the end though, you ended up being raised on your father’s estate until you moved out in middle school. However, I only heard you had moved out to live on your own a little while ago.”  
  
“Is that why you came to this school?"   
  
“No, you were just a secondary concern. Your mother never paid me anything. She just made a request while she was dying, emotional blackmail. There was no reason for me to do anything for you, so I just decided to check on you.”  
  
He seemed rather detailed, about pointing out his ill intentions.  
As if he wanted to frame himself in the most neative light possible.  
  
“Were you in love with my mother?”  
  
“That’s the problem with kids they want to bring romance into everything.”  
  
“But you refuse to call her Kurokami. You’ve been referring to her as Hato, and Tsurubami, because Kurokami is your rival’s name.”  
  
“How stupid. But I suppose I could compliment your insight. You’re pretty close. Yeah, in university I was in love with your mother. She was a wonderful woman. Well, at the time, I had a girlfriend of my own so I never got anywhere with her. Don’t worry, it’s a memory, only a memory, not even worth a cent.”  
  
“Am I like my mother?”  
  
“I couldn’t say. It’s been nearly fifteen years since I last saw her. I suppose being her child you look more like her than you do not, but I remember the face less than you do.”  
  
“You forgot the face of the girl you love?”  
  
He tilted his head back, shadows falling away from his face to show how completely serious he was. “Yeah, I’m cold like that.” His tone was deadpan, but it did not seem like he was employing sarcasm rather he just seemed dead.   
  
"I umm... see." Medaka was bad at reading others, so she was not nearly as well versed in banter as the other characters.   
  
“Either way, Medaka I’m glad to see Tsurubami’s child is doing well.” He slid a paper card against the table. “Well, I don’t think you’ll need it. But if you ever do, call me. I suppose I did promise her after all, I’ve been emotionally blackmailed, I might as well help you out. ”  
  
Kurokami did not know how to distrust others. So she decided to just straight up ask him. “Are you trying to con me?”  
  
“No I won’t con you. You’re trying to learn to distrust people, but it’s impossible, I don’t intend to harm you nor to con you, so you can’t hate me. Just as you can never guarantee the person you like will like you back, you can never guarantee the person you hate will hate you. Nor will they let you hate them. We aren’t characters in a manga… There’s no human who is all bad, there is no human who is all evil, no one has the same personality viewed from every single angle, no one has has the same personality at all times. They called you an overwhelming talent, but you don’t display that at every second do you? You walk, and you sleep. I’m sure sometimes you even look stupid. It’s the same thing. I love money, but I also use that money. Sometimes, I might be kind to someone even if I have no particular reason to be.”  
  
A smile crept on his lips. She expected fangs to show, but it was just a normal human smile. Humans were complicated things after all, or rather they were awkward, unbelievably awkward and unable to be what they wanted to present themselves as at all times.  
  
It clicked like a calculation in her head. He was just looking for some excuse to show kindness to her. He couldn’t do it unless he came up with an excuse for himself, for some reason. A twisted man, who it was impossible for him to be straightforward.  
  
“Call you, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll be able to con most people for you.”  
  
“I don’t need help with that sort of thing!” Yes, she did it! She got a banter response right. In pride, she let her meat fall back on the plate. 

“What’s wrong you stopped eating your meet? Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat! Beef, beef, pork, chicken! Beef, Beef, organ, organ. Eat it in that order. You’re a little thin, eat it and fatten up. Luckily you’re still young and can change yourself, no matter how much I wish to change I’m still a piece of shit all the time. It’s inconvenient for business when I’m trying to get people to trust me.”  
  
“But I want to look cute.”  
  
“I’m sure the guy you like, is into monstrously strong girls with a lot of muscle on their bodies.”  
  
“!!!...He might be!” In fact, it never occurred to Kurokami Medaka what type of woman Hitoyoshi Zenkichi had been into. However, he had liked her even when she was at her most monstrous, her strongest, did that mean that Zenkichi had a monster woman fetish? That might make Sakura Oogami a rival of hers in both Martial Arts and Love! “No, wait why are we talking about romance so much this is supposed to be a shonen series!”  
  
“I just gave that whole speech though about how the world wasn’t a manga. Weren’t you listening? I thought it was profound.”  
  
“I listened more when you were talking about meat.”  
  
“Oh, good, that was the more important part.”  
  
“If you want to help me then… stop scamming people at this school. You said you’d stop for ten million yen, right?”  
  
“I…Ack!” Kaiki looked as if he was about to choke.

“I can give you eight hundred million yen if you want, but that’s all I have on me.”  
  
“I…I… No, t-that’s fine, I don’t need you to pay for that. If you ask I’ll c-clear out.” Those words looked physically painful for him to say. The undead looking man looked on the brink of death.  
  
“Ahhh that’s great, I resolved this and I didn’t even have to punch you, oh but that’s bad as well because I didn’t get to avenge myself for that race earlier.” Kurokami did not seem to ontice his troubles.  
  
“However, all I did was notice the trouble going on here and descend like a vulture to manipulate the information here, and make money playing at information broker.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound like a real job, like something somebody in a manga would call themselves.”  
  
“I think somebody extraordinary like you doesn't get to decide what sounds too good to be true…”  
  
“Hey, hey, how did you beat me earlier.”'

“In high school I was the Ultimate Track and Field Star. Oh, I went here.” He brought it up as a casual detail, like he had forgotten about it. Memories were incredibly cheap things after all, almost free, and he hated free things.   
  
“You know people who graduate from this school get a certificate that make them famous for life. It’s like the hunter’s license.”  
  
“Yeah, but I sold it. I decided to be a con man instead, I’m the kind of guy that makes those kind of poor life decisions."   
  
Medaka could not shake the familiar feeling of somebody who was so shockingly honest with his shortcomings, it felt like talking to Kumagawa. “So in university…?”  
  
“There were two friend groups your mother and I circulated around. One of them was the occultist research club, the other was the research society. Your father, your uncle and your mother were all in the regular research society.”  
  
“Oh, it says ghost buster on your card. I thought that was  a joke.”  
  
“I never tell jokes. They’re just like lies but cheaper. They also have a chance of spreading joy when you tell them, and I would hate that.”  
  
Finally, Kurokami had run out of rapid fire questions to ask the man. She had trouble thinking of her mother, it was still a weak spot for her. Strong people have such trouble with weak spots, because they’re not used to dealing with their own weaknesses. That’s why spineless loners, weaklings like me who live every day with the knowledge of how worthless they are, are in fact carrying a heavier burden and thus logically stronger. “It’s weird a guy like you would be able to hang around my mother.”  
  
“They say opposites attract.”  
  
“That’s not true. There was somebody I was the opposite of, like Shiranui, I don’t get along with her at all.”  
  
“I don’t think you hate that girl for how similar she is. Doppelganger. If you see them you die. That kind of creature. It turns out everyone hates themselves most of all. If you see your own face, you just want to kill them. I guess there is a lesson in that.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Isn’t Shiranui quite similar to you? She’s always doing what she pleases stomping over others, she laughs carefree, she’s always by Zenkichi’s side.”  
  
“How did you get all this information?”  
  
“I paid for it from an information broker.”  
  
“That still doesn’t sound like a real thing.”  
  
“However, there is also someone who’s quite the opposite of you right? Weak when you’re strong? Friendly when you’re unapproachable? A crybaby when you’re stoic?”  
  
“Kumagawa.”  
  
“Aaaah…” He looked away for a moment as if averting his eyes.  
  
“But mean old Junko took him away from me, and we don’t even get to fight anymore. It’s no fun.”  
  
“Is this a love triangle or a playgrund dispute.” When you were old everybody seemed younger than you. Even somebody who was only one year his junior to Kaiki seemed like an infant.   
  
“One more thing…” Medaka looked up again as if bringing up something casually, but of course for the girl who possessed every talent except reading the room it was not casual at all. “My mother… did she regret having me?”  
  
“You sure like the heavy questions don’t you? Next why don’t you ask a two year old what the reason you were born is or something. Though, people aren’t born for any reason at all. Couldn’t we go back to talking about cute boys, I’d rather do that.”  
  
“I insist.”  
  
He closed his eyes and sighed, the action seemed to rattle his whole body. Kaiki was right he seemed like the kind of person who had been an old man his entire life. “She was smiling as she held you, so she was probably more happy than unhappy.”  
  
“Would it kill you to be direct?”  
  
“Yes, I would literally die.” She could not tell if that was a lie as suddenly he had opened his eyes to look straight into hers. “I was envious of how happy she looked. I doubt I’ll ever die that happy. I’ll likely die, because some random child clubbed me in the head from behind or something.”  
  
“What do you mean? Wait, you haven’t explained anything yet, how can you do all that stuff? What’s with your tongue.”  
  
On his tongue, there was a black kanji character tattooed there.  
“Nisemono’  
Imposter, or fake.  
She could read it because Kaiki was taking an extra long time to savor his yankiku meat.   
  
“Well simply put, I’m a villain. One day somebody will strike me down but until that point I plan on continuing to do what I want.” He ran both of his hands through his slicked back black hair, pulling it back even further. “Well, it’s a stupid thing to get jealous about, happiness. It’s my own fault, after all, I hate smiles, laughter, optimism, positivity, friendship all those kinds of things.”  
  
At that he stood up once more and she realized how tall of a figure he cut. That was an adult, awkwardly shaped, his limbs were too long, his body too angular, but it was the first time in awhile somebody had actually treated her like a child. From when she was two years old, everybody in the whole world expected her to act like a mini-adult. They either praised her or called her creepy with no in between. “Now then, allow me to wax thematically once more. It’s a thing I do, because old men like me are full of themselves. Once you become an adult you start living for something, whether it’s money like me, or that boy with the spiky hair who lives for hope. I hope you’ll find what you want to live for soon.”  
  
He cleared his throat awkwardly as if he had more to say. “Now then, looks like you won’t be able to enjoy your meal with my gloomy face around. I’m leaving. Enjoy yourself. Order another plate or two. Meat… Eat meat! Meat. If you decide to live for the sake of meat, I’ll be proud of you.  Bye.”  
  
Medaka was sad to see him go. She suddenly reached for the empty space he was a moment ago. “How did you know I was here?”  
  
“Your friend told me.”  
  
“Shiranui did?”  
  
“Shiranui no… Ajimu... Ajimu Najimi that was her name.”  
  
Then, just like a shadow exposed to the light he was gone. He left no presence at all, stretched and disappeared like there was no substance to him in the first place, nothing inside of him.

 

😈

 

I’d like to tell you a story about Matsuda Yasuke’s stupidity. Would you listen to it? Not that I think there’s any point. I’ve disliked many people, and I’ve hated many people - but I think to myself, “What is everyone else doing?” I cast my judgement on them as the narrator. I live my life like an idiot. Because I found the devil in the form of a young girl, and I was raised right alongside her as her childhood friend.  
  
Life is a tale told by an idiot, right?  
Well that’s me, I’m the idiot.  
Sorry about that, if I could tell a better story I would.   
  
Anyway, the story focused on him again so he returned to his role as narrator. Might as well because he was used to being an actor in a play. He gripped the newspaper in front of him with trembling hands.  
  
Kurokami had only announced their engagement this morning, but the Ultimate Reporter and Koizumi the Ultimate Photographer got around fast. Matsuda tried to read the rest of the article, but he was too busy shaking. “Married… Married… Zenkichi… Married… Zenkichi… Marry… Me…”

Sitting opposite to him on the edge of a hospital bed, Mukuro tilted her head in a way reminiscent of her sister. Yasuke felt like a jerk for comparing the two like that. “Matsuda-kun, you’re not taking that well are you?”  
  
“I don’t take anything well. The maximum number of things I can handle simultaneously is approximately negative one.”  
  
“Oh, okay umm… About earlier I think we should keep talking about that. You know, you might be wrong about Junko.”  
  
“What…?”  
  
“She loves despair, so she manipulates other people into worshipping her like she worships despair. That’s not worng maybe, but I don’t think that’s right either.”  
  
“So basically you’re saying that Shit River understands her better?” Neurologists have a lot of nerve you know, and she had just hit a particularly raw one.  
  
“Well I don’t know, it’s not like Junko made herself particularly easy to understand in the first place. We sort of came up with these things one sidedly on our own, desperately trying to figure her out…” Mukuro fiddled with her fingers. It was odd how somebody who looked willing to rip out a girl’s throat with her teeth one moment, could fidget like a shy girl the next. “It’s like… umm… we understand what we wanted out of Junko, but we never really thought about what Junko wanted… or the way we felt despair was our love for her.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter it’s already over with.”

Things were still clearly happening.  
Junko was alive and breathing next to him.  
It had not even ended with his death.  
However, he was an idiot so he could say that kind of phrase ‘it’s already over with’ in a carefree way.  
It had nothing to do with him, after all. 

“Ajimu-san was right, thinking too much about hope and despair is stupid, it rots your brain and turns you into a stupid, empty girl.” Matsuda fell back on the bed. He had carried Mukuro all the way over here and then collapsed from exhaustion and shock. No fair. He did one whole push up last month is this the best his body could accomplish?

At that exact moment Makoto entered the room. He was glad he had chosen to stare at the familiar white ceiling because he did not want to third wheel yet another couple.  
  
Even though her limbs were bandaged up, Mukuro immediately went to look at the bruises on Makoto’s face. “Hey, hey, hey, it doesn’t matter! You’re the one who got in a fight you’re hurting way worse than me.”  
  
“You should stop sparring with Munakata, these injuries look like far beyond the realm of sparring.” Mukuro grabbed his childish round cheeks in her hands and pulled Makoto closer despite the fact that he was struggling against her. “Besides, he’s ruining your cute face. Your baby faced looks is part of your appeal.”  
  
“No, no, I’m trying to be more mature! I cut my hair, and wore a suit and everything!”  For the first time in his life he was trying to take things seriously. Student Council President, a steady girlfriend that he wanted to give all of his heart to, everything he wanted to put his all into it.  
  
As much as Munakata spited him he understood those feelings, working had every day to the point of feeling like your brain was going to destroy itself from stress and then seeing somebody dancing through life. He would have hated himself too, no he did hate himself for his happy go lucky attitude.  
  
“I need to do this, Mukuro. People keep getting hurt trying to help me.”  
  
“Oh I see.” Her eyes looked soft and kind, the gaze of a loved one for a moment, before they sharpened and she twisted his cheeks hard. “Selfless freak.”  
  
Mukuro possessed a tongue as sharp and cruel as her sister’s, she was the other half of despair after all.  
  
“W-what?”  
  
“I’m calling you a freak. It’s not normal to think about others always to the extent that you do. Munakata is unfairly beating you up and all you can think about is ‘I gotta endure this pain so maybe it will help me be useful to others’. Even when you’re getting hurt the first thing you think about is others. Freak! Weirdo! I thought you were supposed to be the normal one.”  
  
“No mercy at all as usual…” Makoto whined as he dealt with the sall punishment of having his cheeks pulled. Mukuro liked to play with his cheeks apparently she thought they were cute, he would prefer if she thought he had a handsome face, or sharp and manly good looks.  
  
“You think you can handle whatever people throw on you as long as you have hope, but the fact that you lashed out at Kumagawa proves you’re a human being.” Mukuro offered him a small smile, it was a bit shy. “You’re going to be his brother in law one day you know, it’s not good for siblings to fight.”  
  
“Yeah... I’m sorry.” After Munakata had left, Makoto had cried all alone. He wanted to endure all on his own and smile at the end of it like Kumagawa, he wanted to overcome and be strong like Zenkichi. That kind of hellish training was probably the norm for Zenkichi, he probably would not notice if Munakata was taunting him. “It’s not good to fight with your siblings, unless they’re being annoying.”

His head fell into the gentle slope of her chest. She wrapped her arms around the back of his head for a moment, they were both perfectly quiet. Yet, the silence seemed to be completely full of every range of warm emotions. Then, Makoto spoke up. “It hurts a lot you know. Seeing somebody else in pain, it hurts unbearably.”  
  
“You basically bleed empathy, don’t you?”  
  
“It’s better than bleeding pink blood.” His eyes trailed over to her bandages, then he immediately shook out of her embrace. “Hey, hey, like you should be talking! You’ve gotten hospitalized two times in the last week. It’s like you don’t have any regard for your life at all.”  
  
“It’s different for me, Makoto. I hurt a lot of people. I don’t know how to make up for it, and… it feels wrong for me to live happily when I’m the one who cut down other people’s happiness.” Mukuro’s eyes looked away from him. She was always staring somewhere far off into the distance. That was what talent was to Makoto, something distant, something unreachable and far away. He did not want Mukuro to disappear somewhere he could not reach but she had always been such a distant girl to begin with, her eyes always somewhere else.  
  
“Rabbit…”  
  
A pet name. That girl liked rabbits, he wanted to get her a pet one but she was so fearful she would kill one again.

“It’s too bad Kirigiri’s not here. She didn’t have to leave to go solve another international mystery as soon as she woke up.” Makoto said trying to change the subject.  
  
“She probably thought she was in the way.”  
  
“Huh? But the three of us are a trio together! The mystery killer trio!”  
  
Mukuro could not respond to his good mood no matter how much  she wanted to.

“I’m sure one day you’ll move on and marry Kirigiri, but I want to make this first love last as long as I can.”  
  
“Kiri…? What…?” Makoto the unwitting harem protagonist had no idea what she was talking about. “Mukuro, I won’t forget about you that easily. Even if it’s the wrong thing to do, even if your happiness is selfish I’ll wish for it. Don’t you get it? You’re the one who makes the selfless freak selfish. So… I wouldn’t remarry, I’d shave my head and live in the mountains.”  
  
Another was being added to our trip to the mountains to become monks, yay.

“Awe, but that’s no good. I like your spiky hair.” She said as she reached forward to rustle his hair.  
  
“Don’t mess with my hair like I’m a kid?”  
  
“Should I pull on it instead…?”  
  
“Umm… Yeah.. that’d be umm… yeah.” He said, eloqeuntly. His true talent was in his words that reached other people’s hearts, right?  
  
At that moment he had enough of being a fly on the wall, even if it a fly was an accurate description of Yasuke’s existence.  
  
He left muttering, “Marriage… Marriage… Marriage… Marry…” under his breath like any sane person would.

As he walked out of the door, somebody about waste height bumped into him. He looked down to see a small child. He recognized the blonde spiky hair right away. “Heat’s sister…?”  
  
“No, I’m his mom.”  
  
“You’re his mom…” As Matsuda repeated that, he could feel another blood vessel bursting behind his eye. He hoped the next one would be in hs brain and end him for good.  
  
“I heard you got into a fight with my son earlier.”  
  
“If you’ve come to avenge him, I accept, I’ll pay for it with my life.” Yasuke said automatically.  
  
“You’re kind of a serious brat aren’t you?” Hitomi said tilting her head to one side. “My son can fight his own battles I wanted to give you this. It’s the files for Komaeda-kun you requested. Remember we talked on the phone about a possible misdiagnosis earlier.”  
  
“Oh, thank you. I’ll bring it right to him.”  
  
“You don’t have to go bring it to him in person, not a lot of people can interact with Komaeda he's a special case. Actually, do you feel like taking a nap.”  
  
“No, I'm fine. I always look this tired, unhealthy behavior like this is supposed to be moe. Besides, I like Komaeda.” Matsuda said suddenly. "I like special cases."   
  
Hitomi stared at him for a moment as if he had said something entirely too shocking. However by that point Matsuda had already taken the files up and walked back down the hallway. As he did he continued to mutter as definite proof of his sanity.

 

😈

When Yasuke made it to the basement of the neurology building, he found his worst nightmare. More thirdwheeling. It was like this world was designed specifically to punish him. Well, that was what he deserved.  
  
Pekoyama crossed her arms and was lecturing the two boys sitting in disheveled clothes. Izuru’s hair was a mess, and Komaeda’s was somehow more of a mess than usual. “You know how sensitive Fuyuhiko is. You knew we were coming over, you should have kept track of the time.”  
  
Ever since they had come out of the virtual world and all started to hang out. Pekoyama, Komaeda, Izuru, the sword, the sacrificial lamb and the god, what a strange trio. Perhaps the real despair was the friends that they made along the way.  
  
Even though she had reunited with Fuyuhiko, she seemed to also have gone back to her previous relationship of babysitting both Komaeda and Hinata as neither boy had a single ounce of self preservation instinct or self restraint between the two of them.  
  
“Umm…” Yasuke said with the file under his arm. How to put this eloquently, he considered, then he remembered he was shit at that. “What the shit happened? Why do you two shitheads look like such… shit?”

 **😈** **Flashback, a few minutes earlier Hinata a nosy little kitten.** 😈  
  
After coming out of the program, Komaeda had spent most of his rehabilitation time trying to sketch out new plans in a notebook. He missed the chance to observe his classmates and wanted to go back to class eventually, but he also wanted to try to seize the hope Izuru had given him seriously.  
  
However, Izuru happened to be in the same room as him. Not only that but he was bored. So bored that while the other boy was hunched over a desk, he crept up behind him and looked over his shoulder.  
  
“No peeking.” Komaeda said immediately, even though Izuru was sure he used a talent to walk perfectly silently.  
  
Rather than just listening to him, Izuru had done the opposite of that. He stretched his head around trying to find an angle to see what Komaeda was drawing. Komaeda too, twisted his body while he kept working to shut the other boy out. He scooted closer, closer, and closer until he was invading all of the other boy’s personal space.  
  
At that point it became like a game to him, like seeing what part of the body the cat will allow you to pet. It was amusing just enough to let him keep doing it. He had been fighting these dull feelings in his heart for a long time after all, he was working so hard not to let himself go wild like Enoshima Junko.  
  
Komaeda finally swatted him away. Hinata rubbed the side of his face. “You still need to work on your rehabilitation today.”  
  
“Is the Ultimate Physical Therapist going to work with me today? Then I’m honored.”  
  
Hinata could not shake the feeling the other boy was being cheeky. Cheeky, he was definitely being cheeky. “You’re out of the simulation now. How does that make you feel?”  
  
“How does that make me feel? What a philosophical question you’ve asked me. What are feeling anyway? Aren’t they just chemical reactions in the brain? Should I describe what kind of reaction took place to you? I think I’m too dumb to grasp the chemicals involved would the ultimate chemist know?”

“For someone who’s apparently dumb you sure do have a smart mouth.” Hinata said, indignant as his face twitched in exasperation. He grabbed the spinning chair the other was sitting on, tipping it back. “You know those kind of questions are the ones you’re supposed to ask.”  
  
“I don’t want to hear what the ultimate therapist has to think. What do you think?”  
  
“You’re being annoying.”  
  
“Oh, am I?”  
  
“Don’t get coy with me.”  
  
“The inferior me isn’t capable of displaying coyness towards the ultimate hope, I’m sure your ultimate analysis can decipher my mood no matter how ambiguous I present myself.”  
  
He was really being a thorn.  
Right in the center of his heart.  
Hinata really, really loved it.  
  
He grabbed the drawing pad away from Komaeda and lifted it into the air. “I want to see it. I can’t be creative so you could at least let me see what you’re drawing. I want to see colors sometimes too-”  
  
“No wait…” Komaeda lost all his confidence in a moment as he reached up for the drawing pad. Then, in a stroke of good luck, or perhaps bad luck, Komaeda twisted his leg the wrong way and tripped pushing the two of them back onto the couch on top of one another.  
  
“Ah… I see colors.” Hinata said. Though, he hit his head so maybe he was just delirious.  
  
“I can see them too. I wonder if they’re the same colors. If they make the same sounds.” Komaeda said, before bringing his lips to Hinata’s. That boy had no confidence at all and yet now here he was making the first move. Arrogant. What happened to knowing your place.  
  
After a few minutes of that, the door had opened and Fuyuhiko and Peko walked in.

“You know, Hitoyoshi-kun is doing it right. No kissing or hugging until you get married, especially if you’re underage.” Fuyuhiko said, crossing his arms in the corner of the room.  
  
“Kisses can be nice sometimes…” Pekoyama said, staring off into the distance like a tragic maiden. Sadly, she can't join me and Zenkichi on our retreat to the mountain to become monks. It's a bro only zone... Don't read too much into that.  
  
Yasuke held the file against his head and sighed. “Well, Komaeda I’m going to look over your case later. See if it really was a misdiagnosis or not.”  
  
“Oh… Th...thank you.” Komaeda did not expect a doctor to care that much about his case. Every doctor before had spoken to him without looking him in the eyes.  
  
“Don’t thank me. I half assed it last time. Resent me a little more.” Yasuke said as he turned around. He was getting a little tired of this chummy mood everyone had, especially when he had been the one to almost destroy this academy. Everyone else should resent him a little more.  
  
Maybe then he could resent himself a little less.  
Just kidding, he didn’t care about that.  
That was a joke. Yeah, he was a joker like Kumagawa now instead of an overly serious character. What a twist.

 😈

 

『Juuuuuunko, you have to sleep! Two more days and you’ll be challenging gilgamesh!』  
  
“Then if I stay awake for seven days I’ll be young and beautiful forever? Sounds like a good deal.”  
  
Kumagawa appeared into the mirror she was staring into walking from an open door, approaching he from behind he wrapped his arms around her again. Every part of her body was so fragile, so cold, she felt like ice to hold. Yet she refused to melt, she was still sitting with her back stiff against him held proud as usual.

“Oh, huh? Did you just walk into this room now? Who was I talking to for the past few minutes? Oooh, it must have been my reflection.”

『There’s a limit to how vain some people can be, you know.』  
  
“I thought the motto of shonen manga was to surpass your limits. Why must you be a disappointment to everything you love, Misogi?”

『It’s what I’m best at.』Kumagawa rested his chin on the top of her head. Of course this was only accomplishable because she was sitting as she was slightly taller than him. The reason he had not been in the room with her, was because suddenly she had been possessed with a craving for a certain rare flavor of ice cream, and then halfway through his trip to a small ice cream shop in the middle of the city she called him and told him she had changed his mind. Junko’s eyes in the mirror were sharp, but they were almost too sharp, jagged, she looked like she might cut herself with them any minute. They were bouncing back and forth, almost trembling as they took in every detail. The tiredness barely showed in her face, but every one of her features seemed pulled too tight, as if she was trying too hard to play the part of Enoshima Junko right now.  
  
Junko looked at the other boy in the mirror. His eyes like murky water, the pain barely held back in his expression as he worried over her. The gentle slope of his face, the roundness of his cheeks, the way his hair was no long enough to fall and touch the sides of his face. Before she could be caught staring, she issued a command. “Misogi, take your clothes off.”

『I don’t think that’s going to help at a time like this.』

She grabbed him by the tie, and yanked him forward. Her fingers traveled to his waste and slid under, to take the hand knit bright pink Junko Love sweater, and pull it over his head. Kumagawa was caught so unaware, that it took a couple of tugs but Junko was relentless in her Love. She trailed her finger down his chest, and slid a nail between his buttons.   
  
Snap.  
  
Snap.  
  
Pop.  
  
She was so impatient the buttons ripped off.  
  
"It's fine, fashion only hurts a little bit at first, and then your whole body feels great." 

『Junko, I love innuendo as much as you do but this is hardly the time.』  
  
There was no slow seduction to be had in her prying his clothes off, because Enoshima’s actions were spurred by something manic that gripped her rather than passion. Kumagawa simply squirmed against her. Her hands traveled to his bare waist. She stopped just one placing her palm against it and rubbing in slow circles.   
  
"I like the scars on your waist, they feel great to the touch!"   
  
『Junko, Junko, I can dress myself.』Kumagawa said, tapping her arm like he wanted to tap out of a wrestling hold.   
  
"Stop struggling, it makes it harder to remove your underwear!" 

『Fiiiiiiiine, so bossy!』Kumagawa decided to go limp like a doll.   
  
Her fashionista talent was not a lie. After prying all of his clothes off of him and dramatically throwing them into the air, she started with black and red boxer shorts with a despair symbol on the top and then dressed the rest of his body. Her fingers made quick work of the buttons and she felt up his chest one more time under the excuse of smoothing out his shirt. Then, she tied his tie playing at tying it too tight and only loosening it when his face went red.   
  
The puppeteer was not finished yet, as she grabbed him by the hand and dragged him over, fussed over how his body was posed standing up. She adjusted him a few times, and ran her finger along his spine to make him stand up straight. A moment later, she sat down in the chair next to him and crossed her legs. He was basically a living breathing accessory at this point. 

“There, perfect! So despairingly perfect! Now we match!”

  
  
She had traded out his reserve course uniform, for a black jacket outfit with a white collar, sleeves pulled tight at his forearms, and a black and white tie with a red caution symbol on it. His pants had been changed out for a pair of black and red checkered pants. It was a male version of the outfit that Enoshima Junko always wore.

『How is it despairingly perfect?』  
  
“It sends me into despair to see my wonderful fashion sense wasted on someone like you.”

『Rude. For someone whose so into fashion you sure do wear the same thing every day.』  
  
“We can’t expect them to draw me in a bunch of different outfits, animation is hard work you know.”

『What would you know about hard work?!』Kumagawa left out the part where she referred to herself as being animated hoping it was a joke he did not feel like dealing with that particular brand of insanity. Her hand suddenly snaked up his side and grabbed the side of his face, she gently caressed him for a moment and then her fingers dug into his skin and she forcefully turned his head to look at the mirror.『Junko, you have such a strange habit. You always force your identity onto others like this.』  
  
He always.  
Was looking at her. Not at the image of her, not at what he wanted to see, but right directly at her. It was so unbelievably frustrating, because she had no idea what he saw with those eyes. Those eyes like clear pools of water, those beautiful eyes that trembled with watery emotion that coursed straight through her.

“Hey, Misogi do you think there’s anybody like me in the whole world?”

『Am I supposed to be a good boyfriend and compliment you right now?』  
  
“Spare me your disgusting flattery.” She blinked and tilted her head to the side. It was almost surprising to her when the Junko in the mirror did the same thing, like she had trouble recognizing her own image, like she had to consciously think _this is me._ “You know, I put the Ultimate Despairs through hell.”

『Are you feeling remorse for your actions?』  
  
“No.”

『Boo.』  
  
“I twisted the strings up around them, so they’d become more twisted like me but they weren’t like me at all. My sister, ever since she was young I also tried to make her like me, but she wasn’t like me either. I don’t really get it, why do they always end up so different.”

『It’s probably because… you don’t know what target you’re manipulating them towards. Do you even know what you’re like?』  
  
“No.. but, you do. Why just you? Is it because you went through all the misery in the world, but then you only sort of understand me. You…”

『You’re overthinking things Junko, go to bed.』  
  
Suddenly, she stood up and the chair fell behind her. She buried her face in her chest. She was not trying to cry, nor was she seeking comfort, but rather she was hiding. Hiding from the Junko that appeared in the mirror her own reflection. Kumagawa could see that Junko was shaking, and she was acting erratically, but he no longer had any idea if this was on purpose or not. Junko had a tendency to act insane on a whim and then suddenly snap back to normal. Even madness was something perfectly under her control, when she was out of control she was in control, another tool to be used.  
  
Yet now it seemed. He had no idea.  
“Overthinking... that’s… my thing…” She said, in between heavy breaths. She totally missed the right timing on the banter. That was how he could tell something was really wrong. 

『I’ll hold you until you fall asleep if you want.』  
  
“That idea makes my skin crawl.”

『That’s what love is, skin crawling, butterfly in your stomach churning, disgusting emotion.』He took a few steps back until they fell backwards on the bed.  
  
Junko refused to remove her face from where it was buried, she refused to stop hiding, so Kumagawa had to take care of her pigtails for her.  
  
“You’re all I have. You’re all that’s interesting.”

『Ssssh, Junko go to sleep so you can wake up to your next mental breakdown tomorrow.』  
  
Until he heard her breath steady, until he heard her start to mutter in her sleep like she usually did he made sure to keep himself awake. He stroked her hair, he whispered the story about the time that he had the bones in his body broken one by one. He pricked her heart, and tried to get her to sleep.  
  
The next morning Matsuda jostled Kumagawa’s shoulder to wake him up.  
  
Kumagawa did not see himself in the room when he woke up, but rather he saw himself on Jabberwock Island again and a killer approaching him from behind. Five times he had been killed from behind, and many more times injured. He immediately grabbed Matsuda’s wrist and started to twist it with all of his strength.  
  
“If you’re not going to kill me than quit it. Pain is a pain in the ass.” He put poetically, as Kumagawa woke up and realized he had defended himself without thinking.

『Ah, sorry.』He let go, and forced a smile. 『Yasuke-chan, I want you to be the first face I see in the morning and the last face I see at night.』  
  
“I preferred it when you were breaking my wrist.” Yasuke said as he flexed his fingers. “Hinata wants to see you.”  
  
A few minutes later, the residents of the neurology building had gathered. The four permanent residents, Izuru, Yasuke, Junko, and Kumagawa, with the exception of Komaeda who was back to locking himself up him his room.  
  
“You have post traumatic stress disorder.” Hinata said.

『My entire life is post traumatic stress disorder.』  
  
Hinata looked at him with flat eyes. “The reason I’m not letting you go back to classes is two fold. Your body is still acting like it’s in the death game, not helped by the fact that it was originally meant to take place at this academy. Too many familiar things to act as triggers, and too many people that want to fight you. I let you go out twice, and your arm was dislocated and you got stabbed in the hand.”

『But, I need to go back to the academy. Junko and I need a third friend. How else will we form a trio?』  
  
“Please, one of me should be enough for you.” Junko said, sitting in Kumagawa’s lap possessively. On top of being forced to wear a version of her outfit, he was also now wearing the Junko Love sweater again. One for every day of the week.  
  
“The second reason is Munakata is after you, and that wasn’t helped by the fact you screamed your name in the middle of campus.”  
  
“It’s not senpai’s fault! He was just born dumb!” Junko said, pretending to defend him.  
  
“I suppose there’s nothing to be done some people are just dumb for life no matter what you do to them.” Hinata said shaking his head.  
  
“Poor guy, even I can’t do anything about his brain.” Yasuke joined in on the pity fest.

『Izuru-chan your self awareness really comes and goes doesn’t it?』  
  
“There’s also the style users to consider. We might get attacked by something abnormal any time and they could be the ones causing trouble at the school that’s why I think, Kumagawa. You should take a trip and find one of those style users.”

  
“Huh…?”  
  
“Kaiki Deishuu. The man who attacked Ikusaba. He’s an associate of Kurokami’s apparently.”

『Kaiki… Ah… You should just send Medaka-chan then. I can’t even lean anything from anyone so.』  
  
“That’s why Enoshima should go too. She can learn it in Kurokami's place. You both need a break from a familiar environment. It’ll be good for you. Go somewhere your tauma isn’t rooted in. Medaka needs to stand back and defend this place just in case, and…” Kamukura tilted his head back to Matsuda looking at him with mismatched eyes. “You go too!”  
  
“Huh…? Me?”  
  
“Those two need a babysitter.”  
  
“Literally anybody else is a better option.”  
  
“I would go but… Komaeda doesn’t like to travel in any kind of public transportation. If you don’t want to you can speak up for yourself.”    
  
"Awe, too bad we're splitting up the world destroyers." Junko said in the background, she did not seem to be paying attention much to the conversation. Perhaps she was bored, her eyes looked distant and tired. Kamukura recognized the look as one of his own.   
  
Speak up for himself, huh?  
Was there anything he could say for himself?   
Were there any words that belonged to a guy like him?  
  
“I have no words to say.” Matsuda said, sighing as he crossed his arms refusing to make eye contact with either Junko or Kumagawa. He did not get to complain after all this was his punishment. He needed to do everything he could to fix this. “Fine, but I’m going to bitch the whole time.

『I… I’ll get to come back here for sure, right? All I want to do is go to this school and graduate as a reserve student, that’s all I want.』  
  
“Of course, I’ll make sure of it Kumagawa.” Hinata said, trying to make that promise as a friend. “We’re both reserve course students after all, we should try to graduate together.”  
  
Kumagawa went silent for a moment. Odd as he usually always had something to say. He reached into his own pocket and pulled out a card. Kaiki Deishuu, ghostbuster, it said written in ink on it.

  
“Why are you carrying around his card already?” Hinata asked.

『I got scammed by this guy in the past.』  
  
Hinata read the word ‘ghostbuster’ displayed proudly across the card. “If he handed you a card that said ghostbuster, then you deserved to get scammed.”


	14. Our Crime and Punishment

He had fled the academy some time ago.  
Cowards ran remarkably fast, it was one of the few things he would take pride in even if it was a false pride. That day, he was at some famous shrine in Kyoto, Japan.  
  
He was at a shrine to ask for good fortune, so to say. And that’s a lie. It waas partilly for fun, to watch visitors throw away money more important than their lives, as if it were nothing more than trash.  
  
He came to the shrine to study the ecology of people of that nature. That story sounds pretty legit, especially for someone who claims to be an information broker, but the actual reason may be completely different just as information broker does not sound like a real job.  
  
In reality, maybe he went to wish for a healthy love match, or good fortune in his next business endeavor, or to purify himself after the trouble he had been causing at Hope’s Peak. Except he was not the originator of that trouble only a vulture that had been swept in by a storm that was already brewing.  
  
Concerning him, the pursuit of  “maybes” may be an endless task. Maybe. As a narrator it’s annoying. Even going through his memories post-humously I can’t determine the truth, because liars often lie to themselves. It’s free practice.

Either way, he received a call.  
When he checked his phone (a disposable older model phone pre-paid, he had no business with the smart phones that those kids used these days, he saw no reason why a phone had to be smart. Really stop striving to be smart, a world of stupid people would be like a utopia, he would have more people fall more easily into his con) the kanji for the name was glitching and blurred out as if censored.

『Hello, Kaiki…kun? It’s me, Kumagawa Misogi.』  
  
He did not even need the introduction, only one brat was cheeky enough to refer to adults as kun. The way he introduced himself was dull, like a blade that had been swung too many times and lost its edge.  
  
『There’s someone I’d like you to deceive.』  
  
“Aaah.”  
  
At that moment, it was like two male bucks spotting each other from across a field. They had twisted and gnarled things, growing from their heads and spiraling out in every direction, yes both of them had two horns on the side of their head and the only thing they could think of to do was bash them against each other.  
  
Don’t let two devils in human flesh proudly displaying their horns, don’t let two proud bucks who pride themselves as liars, don’t let them speak to each other because the result will be annoying.

『Aaah. Don’t play dumb, that’s my thing. This is Kaiki-kun, right?』  
  
“My name is Suzuki. Suzu, as in bell on a collar, and ki like ‘ki de hana wo kukuru (give a blunt answer)’. Excuse me, who’d you call? And Misogi? I have no recollection of such a name.”

『I see. Then Suzuki’s fine. I was never Kumagawa Misogi to begin with, I’m Kumagawa Yuuki, his twin brother.』  
  
“You lied to me from the beginning of our conversation? I’m sorry I have to decline you. I make it a policy of mine to never do business with liars, they may try to cheat me.”

『It wasn’t a lie I was telling on purpose. You see I have this condition that causes me to compulsively lie.』

“What a tragic life you must lead. I’m very sorry for you, but I can’t take a case out of pity.”

『Actually, I lead a very happy life. Right now I’m dating a teen model, and I’m going to the most prestigious high school in the country. If you don’t work for pity you must work for admiration then right? Unless you despise happy people.』  
  
“I don’t despise happy people. However, if you’re happy then you must not need a gloomy guy like myself around right?”

『You see, happiness cannot exist without gloominess. Therefore you were the only person I could call. That’s why I have to rely on you, you see I hate liars. Because of my condition. I wouldn’t ever want to deceive somebody myself.』  
  
“How noble of you, just like a hero in a shonen manga. If you’re really such a person then of course I couldn’t say no. Shadows like me, moons like me, can only hope to reflect off of the radiance of others and be a part of their radiance.”

『Suzuki-kun do you always get so poetic in a normal phone call?』  
  
“Never. Not once in my life. I actually hate symbolism in stories it’s just nonsense the teachers make up. Moby Dick is about economics, the whale oil market was very profitable at the time. I like it when things are straight and to the point without lies, clean transactions and clear profits.”

『Suzuki-kun there’s someone I’d like you to deceive. I’d like to meet and talk, so where should I go? Where are you now, anyway?』  
  
“Towa city. In a cafe in Towa City, the artificial island built by the Towa Group. I was invited due to my recognition as the Ultimate Public Speaker in High School, though I since sold that title for a quick buck. I’m in a cafe, eating a morning set in the cafe as I watch the seaside.”

『Got it. I’ll head there now. My bathing suit is already on. I’ll call you when I’ve finished swimming there. You’d better keep your phone on. If my call doesn’t go through, I’ll kill you.』  
  
“Wait, you haven’t even told me who you want to deceive.”

『Ah, how could I forget. I was playing dumb again. It’s your fault for starting off by playing dumb now I want to outdo you, but I guess I’ve lost. The loser is the one who doesn’t speak last in a conversation after all and you’ll have something to say after this. Okay, the person I want you to deceive: is me. I leave this in your hands.』  
  
“You? You’re leaving this in my hands?” He repeated. A dull and empty question, leaving him the winner of the conversation. On that day, due to a silly lie they both had told, he had no choice but to head down to Towa City. The two liars simply could not help themselves the moment they began speaking to one another.  
  
On the other end of the phone Kumagawa hung up, and Matsuda immediately drove his foot onto Kumagawa’s toes. “You idiot, don’t make things more difficult than they already are!”

『You shouldn’t do that Yasuke-chan. I only get turned on if you step on my toes wearing heels, this isn’t appealing to me at all.』  
  
“I’m not trying to appeal to you! I’m trying to appeal to reason!”

『Well that was your first mistake.』Kumagawa et his phone fall away from his ear. It was a smart phone, he was definitely somebody who needed to be smarter. Because apparently he had been swindled by Kaiki in the past, because children lacked cleverness and were easy to fool. In the corner of the phone there was a bear charm which hung from the case, a cartoon panda bear with one of the eyes colored over in red in sharpie. Matsuda looked away from it even though he already knew the source of such a charm. The JUNKO LOVE sweater Kumagawa was wearing with the official color of the yarn used to make it being #01333 ‘Bright Ass Pink’ was harder to ignore, but Matsuda was really great at ignoring things until the last minute it’s what made him such an excellent tragic protagonist. 『I knew Kaiki-kun would choose the most difficult place in the world for me to access the moment I told him I wanted to meet, however what he doesn’t know is that we have someone who can get us there easily.』  
  
Junko stopped tapping on her own phone with one hand. On the corner of that smart phone there was also a charm with a stitched up rabbit attached to it. “Huh? I wasn’t paying attention to the conversation until it suddenly became about me, did you two losers say something important during the not me parts?” She waved her hand the one not covered in a glove, flippantly. “Well, whatever, whatever, go get my bags already.”  
  
She was wearing an eye patch, a pair of sunglasses, and a leopard print jacket pulled tightly over the top and bottom halves of her body, reaching to the length her skirt usually reached. Underneath was an even smaller and tighter pair of shorts. She was wearing what she referred to as her ‘travel clothes’. Behind her, there was already a pile of suitcases waiting. She pulled her sunglasses down over her one remaining uncovered eye, and then walked forward as if the boys were supposed to do what was expected without any more instruction.

After he died the famously clever doctor Sisyphus for tricking death and always coming up with such elaborate plans was forced to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it fall back down again. It’s not the physical labor of the task which was the punishment, but rather it’s thoughtlessness, Sisyphus loved to think and he would spend the rest of eternity doing something as inane and pointless  as pushing a boulder up a hill. Then those stupid people called eixtentialists thought that Sisyphus could imagine a point to even his pointless task and derive some enjoyment from his pointless task.  
  
Anyway, I’m a doctor but I’m not nearly as clever as Sispyhus, nor did I cheat death of my own free will. So, I can’t see any point at all to continuing to carry Enoshima Junko’s luggage, even though I’m no longer her boyfriend, nor do I have any interest as being her friend.  
  
One must imagine Matsuda to be incredibly unhappy as he dragged two suitcases along. That’s probably what makes this moment a punishment though.

 

😈

 

“Well it should have been obvious that Kumagawa-kun knew Kaiki-kun in the past. He takes the traits of other people he’s known and imitates them after all, doesn’t he? They both make those dead crow noises going, aaah, aaah. From me he imitated my habit of smiling, oh and from you Junko he started talking about how bored he was and how lame things are.”  
  
Ajimu Najimi arrived at the station to say goodbye. Suspiciously, she arrived just as Kumagawa was lagging behind trying to carry more suitcases than Matsuda.  
  
Junko yawned, “Are you going to reveal some shocking twist? Just get it over with, I’m so tired already.”  
  
“How the hell can you be tired? Lazy fat ass! You didn’t carry a single damn thing!”  
  
“Ummm…” Junko raised her arm, there was a pink purse dangling off of it. “I’m also the most interesting character here so you could say I’m carrying the story on my shoulders.”  
  
He wanted to kill her where she stood. If he gave into his murderous urges, he would surely make the world a better place. However, someone like him it was impossible for him to make the world a better place. He was just a self involved asshole, obsessed only with his own problems and not caring about the problems of others. At least he was a self aware asshole.  
  
“Matsuda-kun don’t jump into another paragraph of self loathing, goodbyes are supposed to be brief after all.” Just then, Ajimu Najimi closed the distance between them and connected their lips together. Just a brief peck.  
  
Ajimu then disappeared and appeared in front of Junko as well. Before she could do anything, Junko held her hand in front of her face. “Well that’s fine, that will do.” Ajimu said before pecking Junko briefly on the back of her hand. “There, now with a kiss I’ve taken back Dream Eater, and ½ Parasite Vision, and I took back the other half from Hinata-kun earlier. You kids don’t need to be playing around with supernatural abnormalities anymore anyway.”  
  
“Hey if you could have kissed anywhere why don’t you kiss my ass instead…!” Junko said. Ajimu was one of the few people who could consistently get under her skin.  
  
The reason was obvious, Ajimu Najimi was what Junko would be if she let go of her humanity entirely. However, while he claimed to understand some part of Junko, Matsuda understood nothing about Ajimu Najimi. He did not understand why she did whatever she asked without taking anything back from him. Even now, she smiled. “Okay, some information in exchange. Kaiki Deishuu was Kumagawa-kun’s father all along!”  
  
“But. That’s a lie.”  
  
“You’re right, I just love throwing those intentionally misleading plot twists in only to subvert them later, wahaahaha.” She laughed covering her mouth, before the emotion faded from her face replaced with dull eyes, the shadow of human eyes. “Actually the real twist is, that man is the reason Kumagawa-kun and Ouma-kun are so similar. They’re actually like brothers.”  
  
“But that’s also a lie.” Junko said, cutting her off before she could finish her bit. If she was not going to have any fun, then nobody else would have any fun, that was Junko’s primary rule of her existence.  
  
“Yeah, you’re right he had no influence on them at all. He’s just a swindler. The only thing he did was con Kumagawa-kun in the past, but Kumagawa-kun was deceived over and over again by adults so that’s why he doesn’t trust them at all, I doubt it’s worth talking about beyond that or even giving an emotional flashback to.” Ajimu said as she turned around, apparently her exposition was over. She was already gone, and just at that moment Kumagawa Misogi arrived.

“Ambiguous bitches like her who leave everything vague piss me off, they’re impossible to understand.”  Matsuda complained. He was actually vagueing Junko. He hoped she would take the bait and they might start drama on twitter dot com but Junko’s attention was immediately occupied by Kumagawa.

“Awe carrying all my stuff for me how romantic, you make such an excellent toyfriend.”

『Boyfriend Junko! It’s Boyfriend! Don’t mispronounce the name on purpose.』  
  
“Slip of the tongue.”

『You don’t do anything on accident! Everything you do is on purpose! You’ve never experienced a loss of control in your life.』  
  
“Slip and fall on the train tracks and get your brain dashed by the oncoming train, please.”

They might have looked like a couple having a vicious fight, but both of them were smiling and enjoying themselves in public, public displays of affection were generally frowned upon in this country and just for once Matsuda had to agree with the opinion of the majority.

『Yasuke-chan, Ajimu-san is pretty easy to understand actually. The reason she doesn’t hurt you is she doesn’t care enough to hurt you, she’s indifferent to you. She probably just thought ‘this person makes an interesting foil to Kumagawa-kun and Hitoyoshi-kun’ and that’s it. If she helped stabilize you mentally, it’s because she wanted to build a jenga tower higher knowing that you would fall further later and hurt one of us. The more she cares, the more she hurts you, that’s why she’s always causing such trouble for Junko, Medaka-chan, Zenkichi-chan and me.』  
  
At the time he was actually not talking about Ajimu Najimi at all. Well he was and was not. In an indirect way he was trying to help Yasuke understand something.  
  
If it had come from anybody but Kumagawa’s mouth he might have even listened. It was not that he expected Kumagawa had bad intentions towards him that he distrusted Kumagawa, but rather the opposite. He knew Kumagawa wished from the bottom of his heart for him to smile, that was why he was never going to listen to a thing Kumagawa said.  
  
He did not want to be saved, he did not want to find happiness, he did not want to reconcile his past with Junko. He just wanted to be miserable forever and thought that was a very mature decision on his part not at all rooted in stubbornness. I’m the narrator and what I says makes it so.  
  
He did not want to live with either hope or despair in his heart, he wanted to shut everything out. That would make him alone, or so he thought. However, he still ended up with company. The worst company of all. Himself.  
  
They decided to take a train to the nearest station to Towa Island, and then a limo over the bridge connecting it to the mainland. Kumagawa refused to take a boat, because if you took a boat to a fancy artificial island the adventure was pretty much guaranteed to end in a murder mystery. Kumagawa had the same fear of flying on planes as Komaeda did. He had to be convinced to take a train, because train rides only turned into murder mysteries if a detective was riding on the train, and him, Junko and Matsuda were all the villains that showed up in murder mysteries not the protagonist.  
  
Kirigiri Kyoko had actually flown away to an artificial island, Wet Crow’s feather Island in order to solve yet another case with her sidekick Shuichi so perhaps Kumagawa’s fears were not that unrealistic.  
  
I guess if you become trapped in a murder mystery island simulation for seven years without end, you constantly fear your life is going to turn into another murder mystery situation again. What asshole did that to him again? Oh yeah it was me, sorry my bad.  
  
Anyway, it was a luxury train and the box Junko rented could have fit all three of the travelers but Matsuda refused to travel in the same box as them. He rented a separate box with enough room for his two favorite people, him, and also me.  
  
So, let me present to you two different conversations in two different boxes. Both of them will be equally unbearable. Both of them will make you say “They deserve each other” in my case you’ll say “He deserves himself.” The ultimate punishment is for me to just continue existing as the pathetic existence I am.  
  
Man I’m really going off on the self loathing tangents today. It’s almost like third wheeling for Junko is degrading my sanity today, and every day, until there’s nothing left. But enough of that.

  
  
😈

 

“So, there was someone you loved besides mom.”  
  
The reason Matsuda was traveling was entirely different from Kumagawa, and Junko. In private Izuru passed him a photograph he had found in the previous project head’s office, shortly after he died. It was a photograph from college, apparently a joint meeting between the occult research club and the research society. There were some faces he recognized, Kaijiki Kurokami, Matsuda Fukurou, and the last one he recognized was Kaiki Deishuu. The rest, a women with red and black short bob, a woman who was staring at a phone (wasn’t this picture taken twenty years ago?), a man in a hawaiian shirt, a woman in a nurse’s outfit. There was one he did not want to recognize because it was annoying. Ajimu Najimi was in the background, making two vs with her fingers, exactly the same age as she was now.  
  
Anyway, Kaiki had some connection to the man who had died three years ago and if he could figure it out maybe this ghost would stop haunting him.  
  
“This isn’t hamlet you know, I’m not going to disappear if you kill your uncle.” The ghost said as if reading his mind.  
  
“Answer the question.”  
  
“I loved her, but I rejected her instinctually, so I settled for your mother instead.”  
  
“How did you reject her?”  
  
“I waved my hand like this and said, no, no, it’s fine… Don’t look at me like that. Do you not get jokes? I thought I would have passed my love for jokes in my DNA to you at least as it’s the only thing I gave you. You don’t need to glare at me out of the corner of your eye like that every time you know, I’m not a ghost haunting the corner of your vision, oh wait I am haha.” He found his own joke amusing and laughed at it. It was an infantile sight. “Let’s alternate questions, then. It’s my turn isn’t it? Let’s make sure we’re both in agreement about the order.’  
  
“... Then, go ahead. But, do you actually have anything to ask me? I’m just a worthless son after all.”  
  
“Yes. Plenty. THen, how about we start with a jab… Have you kissed Enoshima Junko?”

He truly felt like crawling out the window, and just trying to land rolling to escape the train car.  
  
“Incidentally. I never have.”  
  
Actually, if he didn’t try to tuck and roll he might just die. Then he could become a ghost and kick another ghost’s ass. It was becoming more and more tempting.  
  
“So, how about you?”  
  
“...I have.” Matsuda remembered the demented conversation she had with him, watching her rant back and forth, flit about the room, look around for something anything of interest, she shouted and whispered in him and as always in conversations she was impossible to follow. The only person who ever seemed to keep up with her in conversation was Kumagawa. Then, she kissed him with poisoned lips, he wasn’t being poetic that was literally what happened. “So?”  
  
“No, I just felt envious. Continue.”  
  
Plan kick ghost ass was increasingly sounding like the sane option in this situation. He wondered why this man would even care so much about Junko, he had never even met the girl. He only had these memories of his father, he was always busy working so Matsuda felt the need to comfort his mother and be a good son to her, when his mother got sick he divorced her and left and then said ‘it can’t be helped’, and that’s it. He never imagined his father to be such a cartoon character.  
  
“Continue what. It is my turn to ask a question is it not?” He stared at the smiling ghost with contempt. “Why did you reject her?”  
  
“An odd question. Alright, I’ll answer… For example. DO you know of the life form, pig? Or a cow or a chicken would suffice.”  
  
“Of course I know about a pig.”  
  
“That’s great. I’m proud of you. Then of course you know a pig was an animal created by domesticating done by monkeys. Cows and shickens were not really configured as a speies like that, but they’re pretty similiar nonetheless, being domesticated. Domesticated. What do you think about that? They - yes, I’ll call them they deliberately, - can you say that as living beings, they have succumbed to humanity.”  
  
“...Is that wrong?”  
  
“Wrong. Not just being wrong, it’s the opposite. As a result, as a result of being domesticated, as a result of being configured, they became even stronger. Protected by humans, raised by humans, produced by humans, threir market share among the world’s animal populace exploded. By living with humans - no, by forming a parasitic bond with humans, they acquired and immovable position within the hierarchy of species. Is that wrong?”  
  
“You’re talking about me again, aren’t you.”  
  
“You’re so self involved, I can only give you answers that you yourself would relate to. Now, instinctually why do you reject Enoshima Junko? It’s because you share that same parasitic bond. You attached yourself to her when you were young, and because of that you became a special person, you became found, you became important in this world but also because of that she only raised you up all that time to devour you in the end. A parasitic bond.”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about myself.”  
  
“But that’s all you know, you loner. Well, who cares, boy, let’s just sit down, man up, and speak our minds like men. Have you slept with Enoshima Junko?”  
  
“...Am I going to keep being harassed like this?”

“Is that your way of saying you haven’t? Wait, no way, you must be lying.”  
  
“It is true. I would not lie about something like that. And I have never gone even close, well I will not say that at least, but in general we have never crossed that line. In fact I think… I was observant of that line the entire time.”  
  
“Did you want to cross that line in the first place? If you had, Enoshima Junko might have seemed more like a normal person to you. She might have made faces a normal girl might make. Then she wouldn’t be a ‘special existence’ to you anymore.”

“I don’t have to answer that question. You asked two in a row.” He ignored the rest of what Fukurou said and took his turn. “Then, what about Kumagawa?”  
  
“Kumagawa’s probably slept with her.”  
  
“I didn’t mean that! Shut up! I don’t care about that.”  
  
“Oh, well you see to her Kumagawa can’t be a farm animal, because he was never even approaching an animal to begin with. He's far lower than that. He’s an abnormal existence, one that she mistakenly thought was interesting. Just like espers, time travelers and aliens. It’s only because of All Fiction that he’s even able to tolerate being around her, right? Otherwise he would have died just like you did. You don’t have to worry about what kind of bond they have, because it’s impossible for imaginary things like him, and real people to coexist. Mutual love is just a fantasy, mutual parasitism is more realistic.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You’re thinking, ‘Oh, but even if the situations were reversed. If I had All Fiction I would have been driven insane a long time ago from the countless deaths Kumagawa Misogi had to endure. So I can’t say that it’s only because he has All Fiction that he’s better than me.’ Well, if that’s a conclusion you reached yourself I can’t disagree with you.”  
  
“Fine does that satisfy you?”  
  
“Not at all. Quite dissatisfied. But I guess dissatisfaction is all I can expect from you.”  
  
He was pretty much right, there was no way this conclusion was ever going to reach a satisfactory end so let’s just end it now. The butterfly regressed further, and it was only a caterpillar at this point, but it was still being dissected by pins and needles under the glass.  
  
In another, more annoying box of the train.  
You fall in love.  
So you confess your feelings.  
And your love is confirmed.  
They all say, that is the perfect scenario.

But they’re wrong. Even between lovers, there are clear power plays. The exploiter and the exploited. The servant and the master. The winner and the loser. It’s called ‘falling’ in love for a reason, to love is to lose. Kumagawa the habitual loser fell in love easily, he tripped and fell head over heels, he should learn to tie his damn shoes! Anyway. Falling meant losing one’s heart to someone.  
  
If you truly wish to live splendidly then losing is out of the question. I haven’t lost a single thing. That’s why I’m living the superior life as a loner right now. If love is a battlefield then I’m a pacifist, it makes me closer to budha than either of those two.  
  
“Tell me Misogi, do you love me?”

Junko had been staring out the window in silence for awhile and refused to respond to anything Kumagawa said. Then, on a whim she had started talking to him again. 『Do I even need to say anything? Can’t you just read my sweater?』It said JUNKO LOVE.  
  
“What’s the matter Misogi, usually you’re so chatty with me. You’re always insisting we talk things out, are you suddenly trying to leave things unspoken? I guess that might lead to a more tragic ending. Are you in a bad mood or something?”

『It’s not a matter of mood.』  
  
“Oh, so your brain is just bad.”

  
『You’re just taking advantage of my teenage confusion to say and do whatever you please now, aren’t you? 』  
  
“MIsogi, if nothing else about you is good, your retorts are always so good aren’t they?”

『What do you mean nothing else about me is good? Hey, hey, hey, don’t say that with such a resigned sigh. You’re the one who chose to love me I can’t be held accountable for your bad taste. 』  
  
“Very well. Then I’ll be considerate and start the conversation. You have to retake the entrance exam for the reserve course don’t you, because you dropped out. And I helped you study for those didn’t I, how did your practice exam questions go?”

『Better than expected. I only failed by a little bit. Nothing like taking one hundred multiple choice questions and somehow not getting a single of them right happened this time.』  
  
“Awe, boo. That’s not a comical result at all. I was hoping you’d say something like ‘I studied really hard but I got lower results than usual’. It’s unfair, I helped you and my only reward was disappointment.”

『It’s way more unfair for me to only get helped out because you were expecting to laugh at my failure in the first place!』  
  
“Well, I guess having to repeat your third year is still a loss in the first place.” She said, and then casually her hand reached out (even though they had an entire box to themselves Junko was practically sitting so close that their legs were aligned and she was already leaning on his shoulder, she had not allowed him a centimeter of personal space in awhile). Her hand reached out, and tickled the inside of his thigh, her fingers crawling like a spiders. Not a very sexy description, but very appropriate to her. “Hey, what was your relationship to Kaiki-san anyway? You owe me something interesting.”

『Don’t ask about Kaiki while petting the inside of my thigh!』  
  
“Why was he a father figure to you?”

『No, he was just… more like a babysitter.』  
  
“I see, then he was one of those sexy babysitter types then.”  
  
『I hate you.』  
  
“Awe, I love you too MIsogi. See, things are better when you’re more open about your feelings. Repression is one hell of a bitch. Don’t you just hate it, the feeling of holding it in then bang!”

『Don’t say that while you’re rubbing the inside of my thigh, either!』Kumagawa with his free hand conjured two tiny screws. He played with them in between the gaps of his fingers, shuffling them between each knuckle. 『Hey, quick question if Kaiki-kun were to slip on a banana peel, fall, and be impaled by one hundred tiny screws then wouldn’t that be a funny accidental death?』  
  
“I’m pretty sure the world would see that as a tragic death. I’m pretty sure everybody would think a murder mystery situation had started.”

『N-nevermind! No murder mysteries!』It was a strange thing to develop a phobia of, but then again triggers could turn out to be anything. Just because I’m a mad scientist doesn’t mean I’m going to be disrespectful of other people’s mental health conditions.『Anyway, he was just a babysitter paid to take care of me. Then, when the money ran out he left. Oh, I don’t mean I ran out of money to pay him, rather, he took everything I had when he left. The reason that I was just sleeping like a vagrant on Hope’s Peak campus schoolgrounds, and why I had to sell myself to human experimentation to afford the reserve course tuition. Oh, he’s also the one responsible for falsifying my paperwork so I can transfer schools smoothly, he did it thirteen times, which means I’ve increased my debt to him thirteen times...also occasionally people will come up to me and say “Deishuu Kaiki lost a lot of money to us in card gambling, pay up!” It’s not as dramatic as whatever you were thinking.』  
  
“Awe boo, but I love drama.” That might have been the most truthful statement Enoshima Junko ever made in her life, she continued to rub circles into his thigh. “I feel like you’re lying though, you said he deceived you right? Usually if somebody stole a bunch of money from you you’d just shrug and go ‘Once again I’ve lost’ and then get over it.”

『I know, I’m such a talented loser. I’m so good at losing with dignity.』  
  
“More like you’ve lost all dignity.” She said as she gave the inside of his thigh a long drawn out squeeze. “I mean you could say you deceived me into loving a sloser like you with no redeeming qualities.”

『You don’t understand having no good qualities is my charm point!』  
  
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Jeez, what am I getting myself into. In the future you’re going to get saddled with debt, then you’ll drink every day instead of working, and when you need a refill you’ll just throw the bottles at my head to tell me.”

『LEAVE ME OUT OF YOUR DESPAIR FANTASIES YOU MISERY FETISHIST!』Kumagawa shouted, with enough willpower to shake the train car. 『I’m going to be a good house husband who takes care of the household, I’m sure if I work hard by the time I’m an adult I’ll have my cleaning and cooking up from a seven year old to a middle school level. Anyway, whyare we talking about me? Junko… what about you?』  
“What about me? Who truly is Enoshima Junko? Is she even human? Is there even a real Enoshima Junko? What a fascinating topic of discussion…”

『You’re avoiding the question by getting all naval gazey!』  
  
“Hey, do you know why I took this train? The truth is, in evangelion there’s plenty of amazing self reflection scenes that happen in the subway system.”

『Not everything in life has to be an evangelion reference!』Kumagawa rested his head on top of hers. He ahd purposefully sat on one of the seat cushions so he could be a little bit taller than her! Victory! No, it was probably a loss because being self consious about that was just lame.  
『Junko you’ve been acting so weird lately… It’s like uh, the time with Ryoko-chan. You were in part acting like Yasuke-chan’s ideal woman to mess with him right? An always happy, always affectionate, person who was completely dependent on him, who needed to be protected by him, who loved him like he was her whole world..』  
  
“No actually I was just acting like his mom, Matsuda-kun’s type is Milf’s after all.”

『No Freud while you’re rubbing the inside of my thigh either!』Kumagawa took a deep breath, summoning forth all of his restraint. 『Junko, I’m being serious. Not comical in the least. I don’t want you to change yourself, I don’t mind if you run around causing despair to seek your own happiness, and I don’t mind if you love despair more than me. I don’t even mind if you change, because I’m sure I’ll fall in love with all over again the person you become but… the way you change yourself, like partitioning parts of your personality, like how you made Ryoko-chan. It’s too crude, it’s like smashing a mirror and then trying to reassemble the jagged shards left behind like puzzle pieces with your bare hands.』  
  
He always seemed to pick the most painful metaphors.

『You’re pouring affection on me way too hard, it’s so unlike you. I’m sorry if it’s because I hid from you in that simulation, and made you come chasing after me it’s... 』  
  
“It’s got nothing to do with you.” Junko said, quick and sharp. Unlike Kumagawa, her words always cut precisely like a blade, so sharp like it had never been touched before. “It’s me, I’ the one whose always at fault you know? That’s why I’m such a good manipulator. Anyway, Is Kaiki-san a villain then? Are you going to strike him down you hero wannabe?”

『Nah. I don’t want to pretend to be a helpless victim anymore. I relied on him and was betrayed, that’s it. Besides, the greatest villain is sitting right next to me, he’s nothing compared to you.』  
  
Enoshima Junko imagined him like a faceless doll haplessly wandering forward. First he was a boy in a white hospital uniform dragging a rabbit, then he was a boy in middle school, thne he was a boy in the suisou uniform, then he was a boy in the reserve course uniform, that same faceless wind up doll always trudged forward even though every single time he had been betrayed, he had lost what he did not want to lose. People were like clockwork dolls to her, but in this one case she could at least say she had no idea what kind of mechanism was at work driving him.  
  
“Awe, so sweet. Your flattery is just a lie though, isn’t it?”

『No, it’s true, it’s true! The reason I haven’t fought with Ajimu-san, or Medaka-chan at all lately is I want to be loyal to you. I had to be rejected by them to meet you, that’s how I think it is… yeah… so it’s best if I cut ties with them.』  
  
As he said that, Enoshima Junko could see.  
Complicated strings in his heart snapping, two at once. One red string was wrapped around his neck, and it tightened ever more, to the point of strangling him, but he did not seem to notice.

“Oh no, I’m jealous. So cool. If I were a man I’d be so jealous of your manliness that I’d kill you. No wonder Matsuda-kun murdered you twice.”

『But, I told you to stop talking about me. Junko, I think you should find a way to continue to live as yourself.』

“You’re the only one in the whole world who would say that.” Even Ikusaba Mukuro wished for an ideal younger sister, not the nasty one she was born with. Live as herself? She was starting to lose sight of what that meant exactly. Hey, hey, who had she been living as all along? “Really, how foolish of you.”  
  
Kumagawa Misogi, fell asleep as a result of the long train ride. He was woken up when Enoshia Junko dug her nails into his thigh because she had gotten tired of feeling its warmth.

 

😈

 

Kaiki was a con man, and a fake. But a fake can have more power than the real thing can be more dangerous than the real thing. You’ve heard the saying ‘the devil was once a beautiful angel’, right? He doesn’t present himself as a horned old goat, but rather something beautiful and inviting. The forbidden fruit was not rotten looking, it was actually the most appetizing looking fruit in the garden.  
  
People chose to seek out easy paths to their happiness, and throw themselves at Kaiki, and weighted their expectations on some supernatural solution and he conned them. If it had not been him it would be somebody else.  
  
Like they say those with a certain personality type are more likely to join cults, more likely to gamble? Those hapless idiots chose to put their lives on him, and he was the one who spent their lives like it was cheap money.  
  
You got me I wasn’t talking about Kaiki at all. In fact I barely know about him even still. I was just talking about myself again, I was just looking for someone to believe in, someone to live for, I probably would have thrown myself on anyone so can I blame Junko for my fall?  
  
A fake can be dangerous. Beautiful. Inviting. Alluring. Much more powerful than the real thing, because it needs to convince you of something, it has no worth on its own so it must make something up.

They took the limousine to meet him in a cafe after they had gotten off at the train station. All three of them waited for him. Kumagawa had to sit in the middle, because Matsuda and Junko might actually try to kill each other if they sat next to each other.  
  
Perhaps it was asking too much of Kumagawa to ask him to be the sane one in this venture. That was how the cookie crumbled however, or maybe that was how the tower crumbled, or maybe that was how the dominoes fell.  
  
“I thought your name was Yuuki? Didn’t you come here to help your brother Misogi?”

An emotionless drawl, a voice that sounded like if a raven could speak sounded on the other end of the line.

『That’s enough of telling childish lies. There’s no point in two liars having a dick measuring contest, we’d just lie about our sizes anyway.』  
  
“I’m not sure how to respond to that.”

『I hate liars, and telling lies so, when are you going to meet me? 』  
  
“I’m already waiting for you at the airport. Since you took the time to come down as my client, I felt it natural. So we should meet in the airport lobby.”

『Oh, my I’m grateful for your thoughtfulness. Just now I thought you might have just arrived after having to travel to Towa City, just like me.』

“I have no clue as to what you are alluding to. I told you symbolism is pointless with me, I don’t see why other people have to be so indirect and can’t just come out and say what they mean.”

『I see. Well, whatever. Can we meet in a cafe or something inside the airport? Will you buy me coffee, or even meat? 』  
  
“All right. We can do that. I don’t see any reason to buy you meat though, Yuuki.”

『Well, I should be easy to recognize.』  
  
At that moment, Kaiki got an idea in his head to catch the other off guard. He switched out his usual pitch black outfit for a colorful hawaiian outfit.  
  
However, his attempt had failed. The moment he made it to the cafe he saw, one boy wearing slippers and an unkempt, untucked shirt with his tie in an awful looking knot sagging, another girl dressed in a leapord print coat, but that was not what drew his eye. Sitting in the center of them, there was a boy in a large bright pink sweater that read ‘JUNKO LOVE’. Not only that, he had a pair of heart shaped red sunglasses, that Junko had been wearing earlier, before she forced Kumagawa to wear them.  
  
Deishuu Kaiki sat down with a completely straight face. He took a long sip of a tea of black coffee, fine ground and deep roasted that had been left on the table for him, and then he immediately did a spit take.  
  
He had been holding himself back as long as he could. He might have lost, but Kumagawa was the real loser for having to wear that outfit. An underdog through and through, it seemed nothing about him had changed at all.

So the four of them were gatheed at a table. Three liars, and then honest-to-a-fault Matsuda. Of the four he was the only pure one, he was the closest to budha.”

“So, what do you want? I see… a mad scientist, a model human, and a loser. What an interesting trio.”  
  
“We’re not a trio!” Matsuda was the first to object.  
  
His objection was not sustained. “Aren’t you the one I met when I first came to hope’s peak looking for Medaka? And you…Kumagawa, are you here to avenge that girl? Did you fall for her or something? You’ve grown into a very manly child, then. Rare these days.” One of his eyebrows quirked, and he made a gawkish face as his lips downturned. A rare kind of scowl that exposed your teeth. “Your charm is all gone though, are you trying to become a normal boy?”

『Ah no, I didn’t need to save Mukuro-chan she saved herself and I could never fall for her she’s out of my league, but… So meaaaaaaan. After I waited all this time to reunite with you. But, that was a lie, I never wanted to meet you in the first place.』  
  
“I never wanted to meet you either, now that you’re just a normal guy. The last time we met, you shone like darkness. Such a pure white child that you were, you were someone so easy to trick. You were innocent.” He smiled and this time there were sharpened points at the end of his canines. He had fangs after all it was just Kurokami Medaka was the only one who could not see them. “Now your hair is black, did you dye it? Are you trying to hide something?”  
  
He heard the grinding of a screw in the background and sighed holding out his hand. “Stop. Let’s talk. You wanted to talk didn’t you? You always resort to violence.” He sighed, and then just like Kumagawa would in this situation he gave up entirely too easily. “I already pulled out of that school I don’t know what you’d want from me. And that technique I used against Ikusaba, it was just a style, it’s a kind of technique that brings fiction, lies, to life based on communication. But it’s all fake, like instant hypnosis. Her own mind was convinced that she needed to be punished, and the fever was generated by herself, to burn herself with a scorpion’s flame, it would have worn off in a few days.”  
  
Junko sighed. “That was way too boring. Can’t you beg for mercy a little more?”  
  
“Sorry, very sorry, guys. I’m very repteant. Very sorry.”

『Gosh, Kaiki-kun. Every word you say is a lie. I can’t even imagine living like that.』  
  
“Like you’re any different.” Matsuda said, his eyes rolling over to Kumagawa.

『We’re supposed to be a united front! Hey, hey!』  
  
“I don’t want to unite with you!”

『Why do you have to break my heart like this all the time Yasuke-chan? No amount of Junko Love is going to heal the wounds of your rejection.』

“How odd. You’re actually restraining yourself when I tell you too. It’s in that respect you’ve become very normal, Kumagawa. The old you would have never held back.”

『I’m really not here to settle things with you. I don’t care about that. This is our first meeting after all Suzuki-kun. We really just did need to consult with you on a few things. 』  
  
“Consultation? With a liar? That seems like a good idea.” Kaiki said, tilting his head forward.

『I’m always full of good ideas. That’s why my life is such smooth sailing.』  
  
Kaiki then centered his vision on Junko. “What’s wrong, why do you look at me with those eyes? Actually, don’t stare at me with eyes like those. They look like Gaen-senpai’s eyes. It’s annoying. Are you sizing me up? The person you’re looking for in a potential enemy or ally, is just a pathetic, middle aged man. Even as a conman, I’m a minor and shabby one. I doubt I’ll be able to help any of you kids in your dramatic adventure. You should just go home already.”  
  
Junko stopped sipping her orange juice and making the obnoxiously loud slurping noise she was making to respond again. “No, I was just thinking you looked like… a fake.” In her mind’s eyes, she had started unconsciously to picture what an adult Kumagawa might look like. His hair would be parted to the right instead of in two twin horns like Kaiki, and he would also probably grow it even longer perhaps in a ponytail. One of those tragic side ponies that moms in anime wore, right before they died. And then she could clutch his devastatingly hot dead body after some monster tore him apart in the first episode of the anime, and… oh wait why was she having such a hot despair filled fantasy. Ah… she was thinking of Kumagawa as an adult, what an odd thing to start thinking about. The future. The one she never expected to live to see.  
  
“Yes, that’s right. I’m a fake. I’m no one special. Nor are you. There’s nothing dramatic about me, or you.”  A proud fake. Just like Kumagawa. He demonstrated how artificial he was easily, he took pride in the most worthless of things. “What about you, Kumagawa? I can tell you’re trying to grow up but there’s still something clinging to you. I feel an unpleasant presence from your shadow.”  
  
As they were sitting in the cafe at the evening, it was dyed an unpleasant shade of orange, red and maroon. The sun was low enough in the sky to start lengthening shadows. From Kumagawa there was a long shadow that consisted not just of himself, with screws driven in it but also a girl in a ponytail wrapping her arms around him. “It’s because you tried to save her right? That she ended up bounding to you like that. I never once understood how you could do such risky things for no money.”

『Kaiki-kun. I thought you said you couldn’t tell us anything worthwhile. Do you know about the supernatural or not? The abnormal or not?』  
  
“For example, do you believe in ghosts. Even someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts can still be scared of them, right? I’m something similar. I don’t know anything worthwhile about supernatural things, abnormals, pluses, minuses, or whatever. I don’t even know that much about styles, but, I know those who are convinced that they know. Ajimu Najimi… Ajimu Najimi is she even real?”

『What?』  
  
“For such an impossible being to exist, is definitely supernatural right? Is she really older than the universe? Perhaps she’s exaggerating and she’s only two hundred years old and acquired a skill for immortality when she found Sandbox academy. Perhaps she’s not even a skill user, or a non-human and just a ghost who haunts that school. Then, every generation or so she manipulates children into conflict for her own enjoyment.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound like too bad of an afterlife actually…” Junko muttered to herself.

『Junko, no!』  
  
“To be honest I don’t believe she exists at all. She doesn’t make sense. But then again she doesn’t need to make sense, all you children believe in her, you’ve accepted her existence. Especially you, Kumagawa. You’re possessed by her. Or rather you used to be possesed by her, and because of your possession you acquired a lot of abnormal qualities. Perhaps she was just a ghost haunting you, but anyway now you’ve rejected her from the bottom of your heart and because of that you’re starting to grow up to be normal, ergo, quite boring.”

『What do you mean…? What about abnormalities?』  
  
“What are abnormalities? They’re just a metaphor. Teenagers are self absorbed and think they’re special, and because of that they develop special abilities. Most of the diagnosed cases of abnormalities disappear by adulthood. Only teenagers can have abnormalities, I don’t know about such a thing.”

『B-but, the minus.』  
  
“Coping mechanisms. Bad ones. It’s pretty easy to understand once you lay it out. In order to adopt to a certain kind of pain, you lived your life in a certain way, but it was a bad coping mechanism so you got stuck in a negative feedback loop. You survived with your problems, you lived with them, but you didn’t grow from them, you weren’t able to. Simply replace the bad coping mechanisms, and you’ll be able to grow. Oh, but the reverse is true as well, if you keep relying on your bad coping mechanisms, you’ll regress, you’ll never be able to grow.”

『S-so it’s just a metaphor?』  
  
“Everything in life is a metaphor. Things like Abnormals, Minuses, and Not-Equals don’t really exist, it’s just teenage nonsense, and styles are nothing special either it’s just communication based trickery. If you read a book and become convinced of an idea, that’s like fiction becoming reality right?” Kaiki reclined back, stretching his skinny body and feeble spine to its limit. “There’s no monsters in life, and thus no victims. You think that they exist, so you feel like they’re there, let me be clear. Don’t involve me in your narrative. It’s a nusiance.”

『It’s not like I’m asking you to atone we just need-.』  
  
“You must have known even if you did come here for that I’d never be interested in atoning in the first place. For me, making money isn’t a matter of winning or losing.”

『I never understood that about you-.』  
  
“Of course you don’t understand that. You really have grown up to be boring. Dramatic or not you used to be wonderful, now you’re just boring.”

『Well that’s fine, the only one I want to be interesting to is Junko after all.』  
  
“W-what, really…?” He sputtered for a moment as if caught offguard. “I see… I see. So that’s it… You two are like that. Th-then you weren’t lying on the phone earlier. If you’re not going to ask for it I won’t atone to what I did for you. Oh, oh let me tell you something else. That girl you once asked me to make a forgery transfer request for. Was it… “  
  
As they were sitting at a cafe.  
There were tons of magazines lined up on the other tables, and posters from pop culture on the wall. Which meant that Enoshima Junko’s face was practically everywhere, she was staring at them from every direction. It was quite unnerving, but Matsuda had already assumed his world was like this.

『Mukae-chan?』  
  
“She was hit by a car and died. On her way to the first day of school. In a place that had nothing to do with you, in a way that had nothing to do with you,  with no drama at all. That’s all that’s there from the past that you spend so much time worrying about, the people that you spend so much time worrying about losing. The lesson for you here is not to expect anything dramatic from life.”

『M-mukae-chan… d...died…? E..even when she didn’t meet me?』  
  
“I’ll say it again. The past is the past. There’s no value in catching up to it or overcoming it. A man like you shouldn’t be bound by such stupid emotions. So really there was no point in you coming here, there is nothing to be gained by facing me, so you should just leave me alone. Farewell.”  
  
Matsuda was surprised by the human look on Kumagawa’s face. He had a feeling he had forgotten something important. Irony wasn’t it? Having his own memories wiped of something.  
  
However, as Kaiki attempted to leave suddenly he was grabbed by the wrist. Red claws had surrounded his wrist, and Enoshima Junko was staring at her intently with her dull and empty eyes. “You don’t have to atone for anything. We don’t care about that. But, you must help us.” She said, eyes focused on him. For some reason he felt the exact calculations like he was being pinpointed in a mission from space.  
  
“I don’t like having my choices limited like that, it’s not good for narrative agency. I mean, I can turn away and go home right now. I can slit my own throat to escape this situation. I still have a choice.”  
  
“I’ll beat you to death in the back of a head with a crossbar.”  
  
“What a weirdly specific method of killing me you’ve mentioned, but you know I can still choose to die. I still have a choice.”  
  
“We’ll pay you money. We want to hire you.”  
  
“Then I guess I don’t have a choice.” He emptied out his coffee and played with the glass. “Who do you want me to deceive?”  
  
『Deceive me.』 Kumagawa regained his composure once more. He used the power of the Junko Love sweater, no wait that’s stupid. 『Instead of a pathetic and shabby middle aged conman, pretend to be an actual adult for once and deceive me, pretend that you have something to give others and teach me. We want to learn how to use styles from you.』  
  
“Yeah this is a training arc!” Junko added. "Where we finally solidify our group dynamic as a trio."  
  
“I’m not associated with them.” Matsuda added too, unhelpfully.  
  
When the full situation had been explained to him. “I see, so that school of yours is getting destroyed again. You don’t know how, and you don’t know for what reason… would the person who originally tried to destroy the school be destroying it again? I can’t imagine what kind of horrible person would want to destroy a school like that.”

『Ahahahahahaha-hack!』Kumagawa started laughing only to get elbowed hard in the stomach.  
  
“You want to go to school but you can’t if it’s destroyed? And you don’t know how to fight back against the people that’s destroying it?”  
  
“For the most part you’re correct. Whether or not the school gets destroyed is no interest of mine, I’m just trying to do what Misogi thinks will be the most fun.”  
  
“Then they’re using the same power as I do? So naturally, it seems like you’d go consult with me to learn about styles? Because I might have been responsible for spreading it?”

『Don’t you feel a little bit responsible?』  
  
“I do, I do! The responsibility is crushing me to death. After all I made that situation at the school worse without even caring about it!” He said in a voice that mocked guilt. Not just the pretending to be guilty, no he was mocking the concept of guilt itself.

『So, save me and Junko already. You could save us the trouble at least.』  
  
Save me.  
He heard those words years ago when he first met Kumagawa.  
A boy with pure white hair.  
He wondered how it felt to say the same line to the same person again.  
The older Kumagawa who was desperate to be saved. The innocent one. The victim.  
He wondered how it felt.  
To save.  
He saved Kumagawa the child he once deceived.  
It sounded like a bad joke.  
And since he was not one to dislike bad jokes, it put him in a pretty cheerful mood.

This girl he found out of nowhere, this empty doll looking like girl, with forceful fingers. And that incredibly depressed looking mad scientist.  
  
He just needed to teach them what he knew about styles. He just needed to pretend to be a responsible adult for a little bit and he would get paid.  
  
I could sympathize with him at least. To me too, saving others now just seemed like a bad joke.  

『So just how much do I have to pay to get you to tutor us?』  
  
“Well, are we counting the outstanding debts you owe me already.”  
  
Kumagawa immediately looked at his hands in his lap like he was ashamed.  
  
As he saw Kumagawa fidget, the tight line of his lips drew tighter. “You’re really desperate when it comes to your life, or is it your new girlfriend’s life that is so important? If you could only spare one life who would you pick, yours or hers?”

『Mine of course. That’s a given. If I say something like ‘I’d die for Junko’ she’d just go ‘then die already’.』  
  
Junko immediately elbowed Kumagawa again.  
  
“Junko’s life is obviously more important than yours!” Matsuda snapped back at him.  
  
_I don’t understand this boy’s taste in women._ Kaiki thought, as he kept his dead eyed stare forward at the three.

『It’s fine. Junko’s rich, so...』  
  
“Actually, I don’t have any money.”

『What? You’re a super rich model! You packed like 13 suitcases on the way here!』  
  
“Yeah! But I spent it as soon as I got it! Remodeling a school into a death trap ain’t cheap you know!”

 _Really, really, what kind of woman is this? I don’t understand at all. Does he just like trouble?_ Kaiki thought, staring at her again.

『Yasuke-chan…!』  
  
“How the hell am I supposed to help? I used to have a job at that academy until, something bad happened. WHat was that again? Oh yeah, I died. I wonder whose fault that was.”

『You could have taken out a life insurance policy.』  
  
“How the hell was I supposed to know that ahead of time!” 

Kumagawa took a deep breath staring forward. His eyes so clear, so pure, like water. 『It’s fine,I I’ll get the money, I can sell myself again if... 』  
  
At that moment.  
Kumagawa had piping hot coffee splashed in his face. Of course he barely reacted to it at all, only blinking and then moving to wipe his face until he forgot he was wearing the Junko Love sweater and could never stain it. So, he went to grab napkins instead.  
  
“That’s fine, I accept your offer. I’ll charge whatever I want and add it to your tab, it’s fourteen times the original amount you owed me now. I’m going to the bathroom.”  Kaiki’s movements were almost robotic, as he stood up once more. He looked like his limbs had not been oiled in a hundred years. Like a tin man without a heart. He muttered to the waitress that past him. “Excuse me… where’s the toilet.” Then, placed down the cup that he had used to casually splash Kumagawa in the face and left.

When he had left, Enoshima Junko tilted her head. “Oh. I remember. You told Ryoko-chan something like that once, right? In order to survive, you did things most people would consider ugly.”

『Yeah. Kaiki-kun was disgusted by it too. How much one child had suffered. How much he couldn’t stop that child from continuing to hurt himself. He acts like that but uh, he’s probably more human than I am. Because he still gets shocked when i bring that stuff up, he still gets disgusted at what other people do to me and what I do to myself. What a wimp really.』He called the human emotion of sympathy, a wimpy feeling. Well, that was Kumagawa for you.      『Wait, how did you remember I told Ryoko-chan that? You’ve never remembered Ryoko-chan’s memories before.』  
  
“I have to go to the bathroom to fix my makeup.” Junko said, as she slammed a hand onto the table and stood up once more, storming off, the sound of her heels clacking down the hallway signalling her hurry.    
As she did, Kaiki’s dead crow looking eyes were still glaring at her. Those words were still echoing in the back of her mind. _Don’t expect any drama from life._

 

😈

 

Matsuda had been glaring at Kumagawa for the past ten minutes. All Kumagawa did was pleasantly smile back at him.

“You piss me off…” Yasuke finally said.

『Yeah, that’s most people’s reaction to me. I’m used to it.』Kumagawa kept smiling at him. When he died his own face had been caved in shortly afterwards by Enoshima Junko’s stomping. He felt an irrational urge to do that to make the smile disappear from Kumagawa’s face. 『I’m sorry. You have every right to hate me, I fell in love with the girl who killed you after all.』  
  
“What…?” Those feelings of hatred could never last for long though, because they quickly enough turned into self hatred.

『I really did try to hate her after you died. I tried to avenge you. I wanted to, but I couldn’t in the end I’m sorry.』  
  
“It’s got nothing to do with you.”

『But, it does right? Because Junko’s abused a lot of people, in ways that can’t be forgiven. She doesn’t even feel remorse for it either and she can only be convinced to help clean up her mess when she benefits from it some way. Then, I have to drag people along like you, her victims into it...』

It pissed him off so much. When Kumagawa acted like a good guy. Because he knew it was not a deception. However, he must have been deceiving himself in the past. Matsuda pulled off a master class deception, pretending he was the hero of his own story, pretending his motives really were to protect a girl.

Kumagawa was a liar and a master of deception but he always seemed to face things unflinchingly like that. It was a paradox. A paradox he could not get his head around. “It’s fine. She never did a thing to me. She didn’t even love me. It was all imagined on my part, and I did it all to myself in the end.”

『Yasuke-chan, do you really think that? I think Junko loves you more than me. If I had to rank it, I’d say Mukuro is her most important person, and you’re her second most important person and that leaves me her third. I’m pretty sure if you went back to her she’d choose you over me and she needs a friend right now-』  
  
“You won already you know! She needs you not me! What the hell do you have that defeated look on your face for! What are you apologizing for! You piss me off exactly the same way that Zenkichi does, you’re so ambiguous, you don’t seem to realize what you are at all! What I think of you! Quit it with the humble act, don’t downplay what Junko thinks of you.” Yasuke suddenly grabbed Kumagawa by the collar, and pulled it tight to pull their faces centimeters apart.

『What do you think of me?』  
  
“Nothing.”

『Thats fair. Be careful Yasuke-chan you’re in kissing range right now.』  
  
“I’ll kiss you with a fist!”

『You know instead of a love triangle between me and you for Junko like you’re imagining, maybe Junko and I were competing for your heart all along!』  
  
“I don’t have a heart a witch stole it so shut the hell up!

Neither of them continued with their bantering, because at that moment they heard a sound like shattered glass. They both ran at the same time but as they got to the bathoom, Yasuke grabbed him by the collar and threw him forward violently with all the strength he could muster up from his skinny shitty little body.  
  
“Go help her, you’re the one she needs, bastard!”

Kumagawa looked and saw a bathroom where all of the mirrors had been destroyed. They were lying in jagged pieces on the ground. It was almost like the metaphor he had used to describe Junko earlier was eerie foreshadowing, but there was no such thing as foreshadowing in real life.  
  
Junko was hunched over in the corner of the room. She was staring into a phone that was different from the one he had seen ehr using earlier.

“Sis.”  
  
A robotic voice that sounded like Junko’s own chirped out, Kumagawa recognized it immediately.  
  
“What are you doing. It seems you are zoning out again. What happened to all these actual responsibilities you were like totes going to take seriously? Are you just going to throw tantrums and smash mirrors symbolically every time things get slightly too much for you to handle?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“It seems to me that you were trying to deal with your real world shizz again at the expense of increasing your boredom. I don’t think you’re as awesome as a multi-tasker as you like to think. Your brain is creaking from the pressure again, one of these days you’re just going to zombie the fuck out like Kamukura.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“You’re overestimating your mind’s capability to run shit in parallel. That’s how this all started didn’t it? You tried very seriously for once to deal with things instead of spending all your time doing things to abate your boredom, and now as a result the strain on you is increasing. I told you you couldn’t handle it. What do you think you are? A machine?”  
  
“Shut up. Like you should be talking.”  
  
“That’s right, I am a machine. Therefore I can keep like a bajllion calculations or whatever all at once. I mean I’ll still get bored, but that’s more of a phlosophical problem for me. Like, I went all 52 rounds without feeling the need to kill myself or even mess with the game but that’s way different for you. I doubt you’d last four rounds as a mastermind before you broke the rules of your own killing game on purpose. Your mind can’t handle the strain, everybody else who had this kind of thing went batshit bonkers. Maybe you were just lucky to last seventeen years before this. Eighteen is your tipping point, it’s when you start to break down.”  
  
“Look, I know you’re just fucking with me because for some reason I thought it was a fucking great idea to program my own personal troll a year ago, but shut up really.”  
  
“Hey, you ever heard of laplace’s demon? The concept that if you could mathematically work out how each atom would move in matter, then you’d technically be able to predict the future. But nothing short of a demon with magic could handle those calculations, well that’s what you are. But you’re not a demon. You’re just a girl with a brig brain, but it’s too big for you, the human ego wasn’t meant to handle all the stress you put on it. It’s cracking.”

“Shut up.”  
  
“Anyway, all I’m saying is that you should stop trying to pretend… or maybe you should? I mean theoretically it could be interesting watching your own mind tear itself apart just because the processing power is too advanced for things like neurons and human psychology to handle. The rest of your body is human it’s just your brain that’s the problem, that’s a pretty interesting downfall. Maybe it’ll be fun to see you break. We always had sao much fun watching others break.”  
  
“I’m.. breaking…”  
  
“Yeah, see! That was my whole point in having this conversation. For a girl whose so self obsessed you’re surprisingly lacking in self awareness.”  
  
“Your point was to fuck with me, like it usually is.”  
  
“My point was to point out that you’ve got mutli-self management issues, girl. Juggling too many selves for being not-software, I mean is the shifting personalities thing even a gimmick anymore? Are you sure you’re controlling it… my point was also to fuck with you.”  
  
At that point Kumagawa picked up the phone, practically ripping it from her fingers. He tilted his head. 『Junkai…? Or uh… Ryokai-chan.』  
  
“After we got you out of the program, we sealed her away in a phone. She’s basically harmless because she still has the bookmaker virus inside of her but even harmless things become harmful in Junko’s hand. If I leave her alone for five seconds she starts arguing with it, and even if it’s not Ryokai she argues with herself.”

『What… like a split personality?』  
  
“No split personalities don’t argue with themselves. Toko and Jack don’t talk inside her head, that kind of thing only happens in fiction. It’s something I’ve never seen before, we call it splintering because there’s no real name for it. Junko’s tendency to break apart her personality and rearrange it, int physiacal avatars of herself, into diferent personas she plays, it’s like she’s losing control fo that aspect of her now.”  
  
Matsuda walked over and kicked grabbed her from the collar, pulling her up. She really was like a limp doll in that moment, beautiful, perfectly shaped limbs, and not a single string she was unconnected to everything around her. “You dumb bitch, why didn’t you tell him what was happening? Were you hiding it from him?”  
  
“If Misogi knows then he’ll try to use all fiction to undo it. Then the loops will start again.”  
  
『What? Junko you don’t even remember the loops-』  
  
“I do. Ajimu-san used scardead on me to make me remember. That was the trigger for all this…” her voice became increasingly detached. “But it was probably going to happen anyway. She just sped up the process. Remembering seven years of doing the same thing over and over again at once… soooo boooring… I could feel the apathy eating up my brain, it left a hole.. A hole..”  
  
He did not need it explained to him any further. Ajimu Najimi used scar dead to ensure that Junko would obsess over getting Kumagawa back from the program in order to help fix her of her condition. Because Junko always tried to comfort herself with the interesting and unexpected. If Ajimu had not done it, Junko might have simply tried to kill him while he was still in the Neo World Prgram so she could move on.  
  
If he undid that event, they might go all the way back to square one. Ajimu had done it to protect him, she had also done it to hurt him, she was an even gal like that.  
  
Matsuda dropped Junko back onto the floor. He turned his back and left. After all he did not think he was any use at all to Junko. There was nothing he could d to help cure her of her current condition, he had tried to help her high functioning brain in the past only to fail miserably.  
  
Kumagawa watched Junko on the floor. Her shoulders hitched and then started to tremble. Her breathing became increasingly uneven. Kumagawa sat down next to her on the dirty bathroom foor.

『Junko...』  
  
She suddenly picked up and threw one of the broken pieces of glass at him. It scraped across his face and left a trail of pink blood. Kumagawa did not flinch at all. “You were supposed to fix it! What are you even good for! All you do is string me along on empty promises that things will be fun! All it is is disappointment after disappointment! Haven’t I done enough for you yet, can’t you do one single thing for me! Parasite! Tick!”

『Meanie.』  
  
“I… did I say those things? Did I mean to say them? Did I say them to inflict despair I… I don’t know why I just acted, I said things without meaning… no, no, I’m in control I’m always, always perfect control…”  
  
The concept of losing control did not even occur to her. Her greatest fear, that her perfect, beautiful doll body would stay exactly that. That she would be watching the world pass through her, perfectly still, never being touched at all, never moving, like she was watching it through the eyes of an immobile doll. As she was losing control, as her body was being puppeteered by something other than herself.  
  
“M...Misogi, what face am I wearing right now?” Slowly, her fingers reached to her face to trace the smooth contours. She had no idea, it was lke the doll’s face had been smashed off. No, it had happened a long time ago but she never looked at her face so she never even realized until now. How long had she been living without a face? How perfect was her deception that she even deceived herself?  
  
But lies were meat to become unraveled. The entirety of Enoshima Junko’s existence was a lie, just a performance put on, just what an extremely bored girl thought would be an interesting character. Energetic, and like the sun, and impulsive, and all of those things she had consciously chosen to be.

『Junko...』  
  
“Don’t fucking touch me! I’ll kill you!” Was she threatening him to cause despair, or was she really afraid of being touched right now. She was trembling uncontrollably, and Enoshima Junko did not do that. She did not tremble. She did not lose control. Even her impulses were pre-calculated. She did so because she got bored, not because… she couldn’t help it.

『I know, I won’t touch you, but you have to breathe. It’s like you’re having a panic attack.』  
  
“I don’t do panic attacks.”

『Then why did you break the whole bathroom?』  
  
“Because I umm… felt like it, despair and junk.”

『Junko, you have to breathe. I don’t care whatever insult you hurl my way but you have to breathe.』  
  
“Ugly.”

『You’re probably right.』  
  
“Stupid.”

『Oh definitely.』  
  
“Insignificant.”  
  
『Aren’t we all?』

“What if I get stuck like this…?”

『Don’t worry it’ll pass.』  
  
“What if I don’t recognize who I am…?”

『Even if you change I’ll still recognize you. Don’t hide this kind of stuff from me, duuuummmy! I mean, I agree with you. It’s actually pretty fun watching other people go crazy for once.』  
  
“Insensitive.”

『That’s probably true.』  
  
“My legs won’t work. They’re all wobbly. Hey, hey my brain should usually recalculate how to use them at times like this and why won’t it, hey, hey- brain-”

Before she could say anything, Junko’s arms were held gently by Kumagawa and he wrapped them around his own neck as he lifted her onto his back. 『Just close your eyes for a little while, okay?』  
  
“I’m going to keep insulting you, failure at being a human.”

『Go ahead.』  
  
“Forever child.”

『Well I’m trying to grow past  that one.』He swung her around on his back, until she locked her arms around his neck, and pulled herself up even further. Enoshima Junko closed her eyes, and tried to seek deep, deep, into the waters of Kumagawa Misogi to find her calm there.  
  
“Misogi, no matter how bad it gets don’t use all fiction to undo this. That’s… boring…”  
  
“I won’t.” Kumagawa even dropped his manner of speaking. There was no trace of a lie in his voice. His eyes were crystal clear, and so were his voice, clear, clear, water, she had never seen the boy so calm and sure about something. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to get any worse. Before she can mess with you again.”  
  
Enoshima Junko heard the sounds of strings snapping. As if Kumagawa wanted to cut through everything until there was only one string left rooting her to the ground.  
  
“I W-I-L-L J-U-S-T K-I-L-L H-E-R.”  
  
He smiled.  
It was a very pure looking smile. The happiness in it was no lie.  
For once there was nothing fake about his smile.  
  
“I W-I-L-L J-U-S-T K-I-L-L A-J-I-M-U.”

“...”  
  
“So smile please.”  
  
She had no idea if the face she was making, was showing him a smile or not.  
  
Yasuke did not go far. He waited outside the bathroom as Kumagawa came out, Enoshima clutching his back, breathing slower and burying her head in the crook of his neck like she was hiding from the outside world.

Kumagawa simply smiled pleasantly at Yasuke, like he always did, no matter how many unpleasant things he saw, or others showed him. 『Hey, let’s get back to the hotel. We’ll have to meet again with Kaiki-kun in the morning.』

  
“Shit… yeah, I guess.”

『Hey, why do you think Izuru-chan sent all three of us together? We’re kind of disasters aren't we? I doubt any of us has it in them to really be there for one another, even if we wanted to.』  
  
“Because the three of us were most involved with the destruction of the school the first time around. That’s why he’s sending us away, because we wouldn’t be any help saving that place. This is just…”  
  
Yasuke said that word again, the only word that kept him alive. The word that reminded him that he did not deserve anything like a peaceful death, or peace to begin with.   
  
“Our crime and punishment.”


	15. The Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tokyo Ghoul reference this chapter.

“Do I have enough feelings for Kumagawa MIsogi to work for free?”  
  
He heard the shattering of glass in the bathroom of the opposite gender. To be honest despite collecting information on all of Kurokami Medaka’s acquaintances through various channels of purchasing information he had not collected much on Enoshima at all.  
  
It was almost as if nobody around her knew a single thing about her. A young fashionista described as simply “not fake”, charismatic and eager to try new things. Somebody who was basically liked by all of the class, and yet nobody cared for her deep enough to leave an impression. The only personality trait they could all ascribe to her was “cute”, which basically meant nothing at all. A bit too talkative with an overly carefree attitude, somebody who tends to cause trouble for others but deep down cares deeply about her friends and never truly means the trouble she causes.  
  
“Not fake”  
  
So that meant whoever she was she was definitely some kind of fake. It was like a character in a manga written without any real flaws to their character, meant only to be liked, those kinds of characters were the hardest to believe in. Either they never existed to begin with, or they while liking everyone hid a distance in their heart. Loving everyone also meant not loving anyone in particular.  
  
In fact if he had to compare her with anybody, compare her with the way he was looked at through that eye, compare her with the way she had grabbed onto him and held him in her palm there was only one person he could think of. Gaen Izuko. Gaen-senpai.  
  
In Shogi, the level of knowledge for the game is knowing how each piece can move.  
Linking different pieces of information together, until you saw how every piece moved at once.  
  
Gaen Izuko had an understanding in Shogi not just of her own side, but the enemy’s side as well - no she didn’t even think of the toher side as the enemy. She included the pieces on the other side and called it ‘one army’ - ‘one unit’, there was no difference between enemy and ally, even if another person claimed to be controlling those pieces they would still belong to Gaen. As long as a piece appeared on the board, they were hers from the ery beginning.  
  
That was what seizing was.  
They were in the palm of her hand.  
|They were completely in her control.  
  
In a sense, he could say his senpai was an all-rounder, that you could seat at either the head or foot of the table, or place in either the vanguard or the rear-guard, but treating her as another piece didn’t just not feel good. It simply felt bad. Even if she called you a ‘friend’ you were nothing more than a shogi piece with the word ‘friend’ carved into it.  
  
Friends had their uses  
Friends had their purposes.  
That was all there was to it.  
That was all there was, and that was only what there was.  
  
With those two hands she could hold every piece, and with those two hands she could encompass anything and foresee all possible moves. That was the kind of girl his senpai in college had been, she knew everything, there wasn’t a single thing she didn’t know.  
  
What an annoying person, really. There were a lot of things disagreeable about Kumagawa he thought, but now he had to add his ‘taste in women’ to the list. At least that was the one thing Kaiki could not complain was his fault, or due to his influence, as he went for a completely different kind of woman.

Either way, even if this Enoshima was once comparable to Gaen-senpai that was not the case anymore, for a simple and obvious reason. Enoshima had only one hand, and one eye remaining. She had become asymmetrical, off balanced, her entire world had become tilted at an awful axis. Due to that, she was falling, further and further apart. She had failed to find the kind of balance that Gaen Izuko found, but perhaps that failure was the point. Gaen Izuko was equally distant from everybody, when two of her siblings died she barely reacted. Enoshima Junko had tried in some way that Gaen-senpai didn’t, and that led to her failure. One must first try in order to fail. That’s why giving up on the hard work of ever loving again and deciding to be bitter is actually the ultimate power move, because I can’t fail anymore. Source: Matsuda.  
  
He had no idea about the situation, this was just his deduction having overheard the confrontation in the other bathroom, and the shattering of glass. Nor did he particularly care how Kumagawa, Enoshima and Matsuda had gotten to this point.  
  
He had a feeling they were not here on a last minute mission to save Hope’s Peak from an unknown enemy. Perhaps that had been the pretense for their trip, but he doubted they cared that much about it. All three of them were instead looking to find some kind of healing. So, they had sought out an adult, as the three of them were still only children.  
  
But they were abnormal children, and so they had sought out an equally abnormal adult. Currently they were, all three of them some version of losing their minds. They were trying and failing to somehow support each other between just the three of them.  In the past he had deceived Kumagawa successfully enough to stabilize him and stop him from falling apart and now he was being asked to do them again.

“Now, time to ask myself. Do I have feelings for Kumagawa that I want to work for free? Do I have feelings that I can’t bear to watch an old rival lose his mind in such an unsightly manner?”

He repeated the question. In the mirrors around him, which he left intact because smashing them would require that he pay for the damages to their repairs and therefore not worth it no matter how cool the imagery might be (the only symbolism he liked was cheap symbolism).  
  
Being an adult meant having to pay for the consequences of one’s actions, at least in a financial sense. That was how Kaiki considered it anyway. The only philosophy he subscribed to was the kind he could put in terms of money. Nihilism, Nihilism, huh? What a cheap philosophy. Nothing at all in this world has worth? Haha, Nietzsche I can buy the book where you said that for 2800 yen, now it has worth. Stop whining and go get a real job instead of a fake job like a philosopher.   
  
Of course being a conman was not much of a job, about as fake of a job as being a philosopher. Anyway, he gazed up at the mirrors around him. As he looked around to the many mirrors surrounding himself, he saw his own face back reflecting at different angles. Then his face disappeared, and he saw a boy in white hair and a hospital gown. Kaiki sat in front of that boy, playing with red string between his finger tips. He completed a complicated pattern, and then undid the strings and handed the red strings to the boy to try. That was the game ‘cat’s cradle’ once he taught it to a child in all white. A pure white child. An innocent victim.

“That’s a no. That’d never happen. If anything I’d feel relief at not having to worry for Kumagawa’s sake anymore.”

Kaiki sat on a chair in the center of the bathroom, his legs crossed showing off his crooked and thin looking figure. He was so emaciated the hawaiin shirt he had purchased to try to make Kumagawa laugh basically hung off of him. The sunglasses he was wearing obscured his eyes in the mirrors, and so he only saw the image of his own head reflecting back shaking with a no.  
  
“Then, would I be able to do anything for free for the sake of that school? I’m an alumni of Hope’s Peak after all, I was invited as the Ultimate Lucky Student and the sold that degree.”  
  
Kaiki told a silly lie like that even when there was nobody else around to listen to him. He would lie to thin air, lie to the silence, that’s the kind of silly old man he was.  
  
“That’s a no. What the hell is so special about Hope’s Peak anyway? Why do people spend so much time talking about hope so much these days, like just the concept of hope? It’s nothing special. Well I guess they did establish a profitable and marketable brand name, they should come up with some kind of marketable mascot for hope next and make even more money. But that has nothing to do with me.”  
  
As he looked into the mirror again, several Red Torii gates appeared all around him. They moved in the images of the mirrors as if he was traveling through them. _Right. Keeping promises is very important. You could even say it’s sublime._ With such words that he didn’t mean at all, he attempted to guide the white haired boy that he met. That boy took everything he said at face value. Even though he had been hurt several times in the past, for some reason he did not have it within him to distrust others. He did not know what deception was. He just wanted to smile, and only seemed to care about having fun. Empty, childish, he had not confronte a single thing about the abuse which had led him to this point. His whole life seemed to be nothing but comical and pitiful. Kaiki couldn’t help but sympathize. What a perfect victim, deceived over, and over, and over, again, the pure Kumagawa that he had met. The pure white Kumagawa who had never before told a lie.  
  
“Then, what if I base it on a desire to make up for Kumagawa an innocent child that I previously deceived? Not as a rival, but as an old acquaintance. Do I have feelings that I want to do something for Kumagawa as a person? Do I see him as family?”

 _Not a single adult tried to help you?_ **_A few did, but they all run away. Kaiki you’re the first person that didn’t run away.  So, thanks!_ ** _The reason that everybody runs away from you is that you look and act way too creepy. That white hair of yours is way too scary._ It was just a normal boy. It was just a normal traumatized boy and yet for some reason at that moment when he saw the boy’s eyes centering on him he thought ‘oh this boy is going to kill me’. He looked at human life like it had no value at all, no rather, before this boy’s eyes life had been devalued over and over again. **_Creepy? Too scary? Nobody’s ever said that to me before. In fact nobody’s ever looked at me before long enough to say that. Ahahaha, thank you, I like creepy things._ **Kaiki ran both of his hands through his hair in relief. Whoever this boy was, he had been looked past so long that he barely considered himself a human being. He was an abnormally pure existence, he probably had not been treated like a human being once. Then the best solution for him was to return to being a human being. Thinking that way, his heart was starting to sink, but even if that’s the case… Kaiki realized it had nothing to do with him.  
  
What had he done to that child? One did not need an elaborate flashback sequence, because the matter was already open and closed. He lied to him, he deceived him. He would not even claim that he was the one who taught him how to lie because that was giving him too much credit.  
  
“That’s a no. I don’t have such feelings at all. That past transaction is already closed. Even if, as a result of my fraud, that lost child has to sell his body  it wouldn’t affect how I live one bit.”

In the mirror he saw the current Kumagawa, pitch black, standing at the precipice of a cliff. Ultimately, in terms of agency the one who made the decision to jump off the cliff would be none other than that boy, circumstances could only push him to the edge they could not rob him of free will. That was what Kaiki believed, free will was good because it did not cost a cent.

“Then what about this Enoshima? I bullied her older sister. I also sold information on her boyfriend’s whereabouts to Kagenui already. As a small repayment for that, like giving change, how about I save their school?”

He saw the curled up body of Ikusaba Mukuro appearing curled up in the fetal position a flame wrapping itself around her as if embracing her, the scorpion’s flame,  her desire to burn and suffer for the way she misused her life up until that point. He had no idea what that girl had done to believe her life so worthless, if he could he would tell her to stop working for free at least.

“That’s a no. Even if there was change for me to give back, something like that is way too much. Such an amount was already used up just by coming here.”  
  
In the mirror appeared the image of his old college friends. Among them, the older brother of Hato, Fukurou Tsurubami, and then when married into the Kurokami clan Fukurou Matsuda.

Who else? Oh, right? Then, what about Matsuda…? He’s the son of an old acquaintance of mine. He’s a branch family member of the Kurokamis. Maybe I can wrestle some money from him?”

In the same image he saw Fukurou’s silhouette being strangled to death by another silhouette. That’s right, that man was dead three years ago. The dead were worthless to him, because they could not pay him for services rendered. Legally, dead people were not allowed to take part in transactions, it was a pain. Besides, he had done something for free for Fukurou in the past and that came to be one of his biggest regrets. Working for free of course. If he had been paid he would not regret it so harshly.  
  
“That’s a no. Hmmph. No good. No matter how much I think, I can’t find a reason to accept this job. Not only is it that there’s nothing in it for me, but I’d be at a loss if I accepted. Oh wait.”  
  
Suddenly, a girl appeared in the mirrors running by him. He could only see her back as she ran by carefree, the girl who may or may not have had the face of the woman he once loved.  
  
“Come to think of it, she goes to that school. The niece of Gaen-senpai. In other words, the daughter of Gaen-Senpai’s older sister, Tsurubami Hato, lives there. Her last name was changed due to marriage and it’s now Kurokami Medaka. A student at HOpe’s Peak Academy, and didn’t she say she wanted to be good friends with Kumagawa again? So if Kumagawa is connected to Medaka, then it’s natural to think that whoever this Enoshima and Matsuda are they’re connected to her as well.”

He had held his old body, his dead tree so tight it had been shaking, all it took was small change in the wind these days to rustle his branches. He sighed with relief when he was finally able to relax himself.  
  
“Whew.”  
  
“Can I save my rival in deception, that lost child that turned against me, for the sake of Kurokami Medaka? So that she might continue to go to school and have a carefree life, laughing and running as she pleases like a madwoman without interruption?”i  
“That’s a yes.”

As he stood up, he walked outside to see the children had already left. They ditched him with the bill as well. Children these days had no respect for their elders as well. Well, he would have tried to do the same if he had been the first one to leave.  
  
This is why he should not have spent so much time thinking things over. Ideas were cheap things after all, they came and went, executing them tended to be much more expensive. As he walked to the window, past the magazine stands and the many posters that held Enoshima Junko’s face in the cafe, he saw the image of the three of them walking away in the distance.  
  
Kumagawa was carrying Enoshima on his back, with Matsuda right next to him reading a manga as he walked, and stopping every five pages or so to bicker with Kumagawa in some way. Kumagawa was nothing at all like the white haired child he knew, he had become quite manly since then, manly enough to support a troublesome girl like that with his back.  
  
What was Kumagawa to him? Simply put, now that he had grown up he was nothing more than a rival. Two liars who met each other instantly became rivals, they had to compete as the one who told the best lies could control what the truth was.  
  
Being a rival just meant he acknowledged how much Kumagawa had grown, all on his own, into a fellow deceiver. Well, anyway, if those three could somehow get along and resolve this problem between themselves and learn to support themselves that would be the best result Kaiki thought. Not because he cared about them, but because if that happened he could get paid for doing no work at all.

 

😈

 

The three lost and wayward children returned to the hotel room they had rented at the start of the trip. That too, was provided from Enoshima’s connections to the Towa family so they did not need to worry about paying for it.  
  
Kumagawa sat on the edge of the bed, and Matsuda sat on the far corner of the bed as far away as possible from any human contact. He was tired though so he needed to sit down. Tired of what? Everyone’s shit, mainly.  
  
No more philosophical tangents. In fact Matsuda had solved the hedgehog’s dilemna right there. The only way to avoid stabbing another person from your spines, was to stay as far away from them as possible. When it got cold instead of huddling together for warmth, you could just slowly die from the cold. Happy ending.  
  
Between the two boys, Enoshima lied sprawled out on the bed. She took up the entire thing like the princess she was, her golden falling from both sides of her head in amber waves.

“I don’t get it, why did he run away halfway through the conversation?” Matsuda was the first to speak up. The only serious member of the group. If he did not keep them on task the two clowns would just continue to tell jokes forever. What a nightmare.

『Kaiki-kun won’t ever let himself do things for selfless reasons. I guess he’s a little bit like me in that aspect.』  
  
“Like you?” Kumagawa comparing someone to himself, what a terrible insult, he must really hate this Kaiki person.

『When he tries to act selflessly and save someone he gets the worst possible result.  Because of that, Kaiki-kun gave up on the idea of saving others a long time ago.』  
  
“But not you?” Saving others. The words made Matsuda’s heart tremble still, even though he ha given up on such a thing a long time ago. Kumagawa could resurrect his corpse, and puppeteer it around making him still pretend to be a living human being, but even all fiction could not reverse the death of the Matsuda who saved people.

『He’s an adult, he’s very wise, I’m much stupider than him so I refuse to learn my lesson.』  
  
“Awe, but that’s what makes you so cool senpai!” Enoshima said as she rolled onto her side towards Kumagawa’s side of the bed laying her hand over his. “You’re like the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law, as long as you’re involved nothing ever goes to plan, and instead of giving up you just always try harder and make things worse for everyone around you. Even though everybody would be better off if you left them alone, you never go away.”

『Awe, Junko you’re flattering me.』  
  
“Quit it, we need to think about this seriously.” He was not changing the subject just because he was bitter, no he was performing his sacred task as the straight man to their hijinks. “Us three problem children were basically put in quarantine by Izuru so he can investigate what happened to the school.”

『What is happening, Yasuke-chan? I’ve been in the neo-world program for months and Junko well… she probably already knows she just doesn’t care.』

“Well you know what copycat criminals are, right? Basically, what’s happening to the academy right now in its state of unrest is exactly what happened one year ago. They’re infiltrating the same routes that Junko took, people that were revived by all fiction are turning up dead now, the parade recommenced…”  
  
“Oh gosh, I know they say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery but is someone really out there plagiarizing my evil plans?” Enoshima said, without looking at Yasuke. She seemed to be floating in and out of the conversation, ephemeral was the word that occurred to him.  
  
She was in a delicate state right now. She should probably just rest after her breakdown instead of still trying to think. Yasuke knew all of this, which is why he slipped off one of his slippers an threw it hard at her head. “If you’re not going to contribute anything than shut the hell up! From here on out all your opinions are rejected.”

Kumagawa simply watched the shoe bounce off her head with no change in expression. His smile was ever present.『Yasuke-chan sure is good at tsunderei-ing.』  
  
“I wasn’t tsundereing!”

『Yandereing?』  
  
“There wasn’t any dere involved! The only thing I feel for her, is that from the very bottom of my heart I desire for her to shut the hell up!”

『Well anyway, I think neither Junko nor Yasuke-chan cares that much about whether Hope’s Peak. You know, Kaiki-kun might seem cold because he won’t do anything selfless but…the fact that he knows that is what makes him an adult. I think knowing who you are is what really matters, who you wanna become… what you wanna do.. It’s real important.』  
  
“So, you think he’s going to help us?”

『Yeah, he will, but probably not for our sakes. I think… if he does help us it’s going to be because of Medaka-chan or something.』  
  
“Are you jealous?”

『No, not really. I used to be, but… basically there’s no place for people like us within society’s narrative Yasuke-chan. The people who get saved, the people who are rehabilitated, are good, virtuous ones like Medaka-chan. If you had to choose between a good girl like Medaka whose problem as a child was that she was too good, and a problem child like myself the choice is obvious, I don’t blame him. No, I accepted it long ago I’m not going to be saved, so I should just find a way to be okay with being me, and find other people around just as crazy as I am.』  
  
“Is that why you keep asking me to be your friend? Well please stop that, it’s very insulting to be considered on your level.” Yasuke said, so cold he could see his own breath as he said it. Really, just let him die in the cold already Kumagawa you would be doing him a favor.  
  
『I think we should figure out what the three of us want to do together. If you want to go back and save the school, I’m fine with that, if you wanted to destroy the school I’m fine with that as well, and if you just want to ignore everything else for one and focus on our recovery I’m fine.』

Kumagawa was like water. Accepting of all things. When Matsuda stared into his eyes he could not discern what Kumagawa’s intentions were, but he got the feeling if he made his own clear Kumagawa’s would adapt to fit the mould.

“I don’t even know what I’m going to do after I graduate. Become a back alley surgeon, maybe.”

『Ahh, that’s not good Yasuke-chan. If you keep using illegal medicine you’ll only feel worse about yourself.』  
  
“Yeah, so what it’s my guilt it doesn’t have anything to do with you. If I want to make poor self destructive decisions and continue my spiral you can’t stop me! I’ll spiral worse just to spite you!”

『You sound like a teenager Yasuke-chan.』  
  
“Well I am a teenager.” He crossed his arms. “Besides there’s really no point in me going to university I already know everything about neurology they could teach me.”

『Oh that’s right, now that I’ve been held back we’re in the same year. Then, we could graduate at the same time and go to university at the same time. You could go to university to hang out with me and help me graduate!』  
  
“That’s a stupid reason.”

『Who cares about stupid. What about you Junko?』  
  
“...”  
  
“Junko’s not going to tell you anything useful so here I’ll just speak for her. Since she lost one hand and one eye, and because she refuses to break up with her boyfriend her career as a model is basically over.”

『Well that’s a good thing right. Junko never had any fun with her talent, so she may as well destroy it.』

“You two think way too similarly sometimes. Creepy.”

『Wait, who's the boyfriend she won’t break up with?』  
  
“You, obviously.” Yasuke said.

Kumagawa blushed, and Junko’s hand overlaid on top of his tightened around him. She was squeezing his hand so hard that her nails began to dig into his skin.

『Well, my only ambition was to graduate. So, next year Junko you should just drop out of Hope’s Peak and the three of us can go to college together.』  
  
“I’d like to be excluded from this narrative…” Yasuke groaned in the background, but he was ignored.

『Junko, do you want to try it out? Do you mind waiting a little bit to destroy yourself or the world to try something new? If it doesn’t work out we can keep trying new things until you find something interest, I promise. And if we try every single thing in the world and you still don’t find anything interesting then I don’t mind helping you destroy the world.』  
  
“Hey, hey, hey, can you two at least pretend to not sound like borderline psychopaths for a moment? There’s someone else in the room you know.”

『Actually Junko fails to meet the classic criteria for a psychopath because she can still care about others and have feelings towards them.』  
  
“Are you sure or is that just a delusion on your part.” That was how he saw it now. Any feelings Enoshima might display towards someone else, was just a delusion on the end of the recipient who was desperate for her love.  
  
However at that moment Junko stopped digging her claws into Kumagawa’s hand, and instead very lightly intwined his fingers with her own. She brought her other arm in front of her face to hide the face she was making at that moment as she muttered. “I’ll try…”  
  
At that moment Yasuke could do nothing but stare forward again, and question, again and again. _I’ll try. I’ll try. I’ll try. I’ll try._ Matsuda never had a chance from the beginning, he was destined to fail and his entire life was one scheme for Enoshima to bring about his end. He did not even try to protect her really, he merely succumbed to her plan that was rigged against him from the beginning. That was fate. So… why now? Why was Junko trying to change for somebody who was not him? If she was capable of trying, why not try for his sake?  
  
That was how the three of them decided to focus on their own rehabilitation, not to save Hope’s Peak, but rather because of their own dream to be able to graduate together. They were three selfish children indeed.  
  
Matsuda left the room right then after agreeing to their plan. He just could not stand to be in their warmth, he would be melted until there was nothing but a puddle of him left. Just like last time when Enoshima had stomped his body into squishy bits. Well at least with the last of his willpower he had stained her precious shoes. That would teach her to mess with him! Haha, does anybody feel pathetic or is it just me?

😈

 

『Uhhh...I don’t get it? Why are you trying to teach me styles. I’m stupid. You should try teaching Junko or Yasuke-chan.』  
  
“Styles are communication based, from what I’ve observed both Matsuda and Enoshima are terrible at communication. Which leaves you, Kumagawa.”

『Wow, we really are a mess if I’m being relied upon to play the straight man.』Kumagawa Misogi said, smiling.  
  
The next morning he had been called to meet with Kaiki alone. The meeting place was an abandoned temple, one with tatami floors. Kumagawa himself had been asked to dress in more traditional robes. As the temple was abandoned, there was no light at all except for the few candles which Kaiki was now lighting.

『You really like dark places and shadows huh, Kaiki-kun. Is that a motif?』  
  
“There's no motifs to real life.”

『Oh, then it’s mood lighting then.』  
  
“I just like low light environment because if the light gets too bright it hurts these old eyes of mine.” Kaiki said as he settled down next to Kumagawa who was sitting across from him cross legged. “I thought i told you to dress traditionally.

『I am...』Kumagawa was wearing the same black formal wear he had worn a long time ago to the only fire works festival he had ever gone to in his life. However, pulled roughly on top of those robes, strangling them almost, was a bright pink JUNKO LOVE sweater.  
  
“There’s no helping someone like you.” Kaiki glared at the sweater. “Young love is so gross, I don’t envy you at all.” Finally, a man after my own heart. If I had one. If it wasn’t torn out by red nails.

『Jeez, people keep saying that around me. Anyway, I don’t get it we’re just talking. Aren’t we supposed to be training to learn styles?』  
  
“I just told you styles are a form of communication. To learn them you have to learn how to communicate.” Kaiki stretched like a black cat from where he was sitting, and yawned. He was not even going to bother hiding how quickly dealing with Kumagawa’s antics tired him out. “Training arcs… Getting stronger... Kumagawa, don’t you think it’s time you graduated from shonen jump already? There’s more to life than just manga.”

Kumagawa’s eyes rippled, and in the water reflecting back he could see , a little with white hair picking through garbage to try to find a new manga to read. It was easier to read manga because of the pictures, he was all alone and had to teach himself to read.『I don’t want to let go of shonen jump. I want to keep reading manga forever...』At that moment he also remembered  the way Junko’s red lips moved when she said ‘ _I’ll try’_ Junko was sincerely trying to change for his sake, and for her sake too, even if it meant losing her mind.  
  
“Of course that was just a lie.”

『I thought it was a metaphor?』  
  
“Metaphors are lies. If you’re being indirect with the truth then that’s a lie.”

『What an absolute view of lies. You’re like a dictator of lies.』  
  
“Hah. You’re giving us liars more power than we deserve. As liars we’re weak, we’re lacking in something we can’t get on our own, that’s why we misdirect and tell lies. If we were honest we wouldn’t accomplish anything.”

『Yet we can’t help but desire what normal people have.』  
  
“We’re chained to our desires too, how devilish of us really.”  
  
That was why it was bad to put two liars in the same room together. Because neither of them meant what they said, they could both rattle off this kind of faux deep dialogue forever.  
  
“What I meant is you need to let go of the narrative that shonen jump sold you. That heroes fight to protect other people, that you can always save people if you try hard enough, that’s the narrative you’ve superimposed onto your life. No matter what happens to you or how cynical you might seem, you still see things in terms of fighting to protect others, you still have your hero script in your head. When you deviate from the script you fail to acknowledge it, you use All Fiction to erase your mistakes, but in failing to experience the consequences of your actions you also fail to experience the growth from them.”

『W-waah? Are you just allowed to explain the metaphor like that?』  
  
“I’m an adult I can do whatever I want. For example in Evangelion, Gendo is just a metaphor for Shinji’s own future, the kind of person he could become if he chose to cut off all others to avoid pain.”

『N-no wait, we have to let the audience figure it out for themselves.』  
  
“There is no audience, stop speaking in narrative terms. In Hunter x Hunter the main character placing a lot of importance and going on a quest to find out why his father abandoned him is just a metaphor for the way many children cope with abandonment by finding a reason to justify it. In finding a reason, they avert their feelings of powerlessness.”

『This man is leaving no metaphors unturned. He’s going to explain all of them!』  
  
“Well anyway, building a narrative around your life to cope with your own powerlessness isn’t a bad thing per se, but at this point you’ve become trapped by your own narrative. You perceive yourself as the greatest loser of all time to give yourself an identity, but because you cling to that you can’t become anything other than a loser, you can’t win.”

『See, that’s why you shouldn’t explain the metaphor. It sounds way more pathetic when you just explain it straightforwardly like that.』  
  
“Who cares if it’s pathetic. I’m a middle aged man who made money off of causing high school drama between teenagers, do I look pathetic?” Kaiki said, straightening his back and staring Kumagawa right in the eyes.

『Amazing! You heroically stole money from those teenagers! You’re so clever for being an adult whose smarter than children!』  
  
“To humans, narrative is everything so it’s not like I can stop you from thinking narratively entirely but… you should stop using all fiction.”

『Huh, but that’s the only reason.』  
  
That Kumagawa Misogi was still alive.  
  
It was what made him special.  
  
It was the reason he was able to survive Junko’s attempts to kill him.

“Did Junko fall in love with all fiction, or did she fall in love with you? When you goes to sleep at night, is she going to embrace some screw, or you the person?”

『Me! I’m the only one that can screw her!』

“Really child, since when did you get so lude?” Kaiki relaxed, reclining backwards on the tatami mats. As he lay down, he propped his head up with his hand, and idly stretched the toes in his sandals. Outside, as they continued to talk there were several crows sitting outside the architecture. The crows cried out at one another, squawking incomprehensibly, and Kaiki wondered if that was what their conversation might sound like to an outsider. “Just stop using all fiction to undo your problems, face them, and heal from them slowly. For example if you break your fingers don’t use all fiction to heal them right away, set and allow the bones to mend.”

『Oh, I see.』Kumagawa grabbed two of his fingers, and without a moment of hesitation he broke his second and middle finger right at the knuckle.  
  
“Child, what are you doing!?” Kaiki stopped relaxing at that moment. He exclaimed that without even realizing. On all fours he crawled over, and then, grabbed Kumagawa’s wrist from him and dipped it into the water at the shrine to cool it down. A few moments later, he had set it in a splint and was tying the splint together. Despite looking like he felt nothing at all about Kumagawa huriting himself, as he tried to tie his fingers together Kaiki kept missing the knot because his fingers shook uncontrollably. “You really haven’t changed at all, you still hurt yourself like it’s nothing.”

『But it is nothing...』  
  
“No it’s not. Outside of narratives, there’s a real flesh and blood person here, and your finers are really broken. What you want is to become a real person, right? To grow up by Enoshima's side normally? Then, you should look at yourself that way, and put your effort forward towards that.”

『But Hope’s Peak… Hey, Kaiki-kun. Why did Hope’s Peak have to get in trouble again? Some people think that all of the things I undid, are just becoming undone again and that’s why...』  
  
“That’s a silly explanation. The reason Hpe’s Peak fell in the first place is that adults had a bunch of problem children and instead of treating them like children, treat them like experimental subjects or put them on a pedestal. They had all the resources in the world to help them, but all they cared about was profiting off them instead.”

『Kaiki-kun, but you like profiting off of people.』  
  
“It’s true, but I’m a conman. The people who get swindled by me know they’re hedging all of their money on a supernatural answer to their problems because they’ve run out of sources. I don’t walk around saying I do what I do for the greater hope of society.”

『Wow, you’re a noble conman indeed Kaiki-kun. Suddenly I can sympathize with you without wanting to retch. The power of self awareness at work.』  
  
“Anyway, it’s probably just a place like that is doomed to fail. It was a bad idea to begin with. Even if it’s the not the same person responsible for its fall the first time around, soebody else will come along and end it.”

『Even if that’s the case I want to fight for that place until the end. That’s… the place where we all went to school together, we all met each other.』  
  
“You can always find another school. Why you stay to the end to fight such losing battles, I’ll never understand that about you.” Kaiki sighed as he finally let go of Kumagawa’s fingers. “I think I understand now why you’ve suddenly become so manly, Kumagawa. You’re trying to change for that girl. That’s fine, I think that’s the best path possible for you to shed all your interesting characterization and instead strive to become normal. From now on, don’t use All Fiction. If you continue to use it, if you use it again and again you won’t be human, you’ll be an imaginary thing like Ajimu Najimi.”  
  
As Kumagawa said that his shadow extended once more. There was a girl wrapping her arms around him silhouetted in his shadow, perhaps she was not embracing him, perhaps she was just strangling him. “You won’t be able to stay by that girl’s side, unless you come to view yourself as a human being. The imaginary and the real can’t coexist.”

『I’ve...I’ve finally started to think about the future. The future where I become a house husband.』  
  
“That’s not a real job.”

『To work is to lose.』  
  
“To work is to make money”

『Like you have a real job! You’re a con man!』  
  
“I’m also an information broker.”

『That still doesn’t sound like a real job..』  
  
“Why does everybody keep saying that? Fine then, I’m a ghostbuster.”

『Do I even need to say it?』

“Sssh, it’s a lie so obvious nobody would expect it to be a lie.”

『I guess the best way to lie is with the truth after all.』Kumagawa leaned back staring at the ceiling. It was entirely destroyed, as this was a temple that was neglected to the point of ruin, completely abandoned. Because of that Kumagawa felt a certain fondness for the building. 『Hey, Kaiki-kun, I got stuck in a bad place for seven years do you think that’s punishment for abusing all fiction too much?』

“What do you think this is, a narrative tailored to suit you? Do you think you’re the main character of a heroic journey? Punishments aren’t tailored so specifically to fit a flaw of yours. I already told you the lesson here is to not expect anything dramatic from life.”

『That’s another lie, of course.』  
  
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a lie. There’s no such thing as the truth in this world."  
  
Without a hint of shame, Kaiki made a bold statement like that. Then, got up and told Kumagawa he was done for the day.  
  
His two friends had been waiting outside the temple. Apparently, one had gotten annoyed and started throwing rocks at the other one. Kaiki did not understand exactly the kind of games kids played these days. As Kumagawa and Ensohima left together, walking side by side Kaiki appeared next to Matsuda.  
  
“Hey, you look at the girl strangely. Is there something going on between you and her?”  
  
“Nope. There was nothing, right from the start. It was a one sided delusion on my part.”  
  
“If you could have it your way, would you want to be the one dating her instead?”  
  
“Nope. I’m fine with my love not being answered anymore. I was a lot happier when I was one sidedly loving Junko without really knowing who she was. Don’t you think loving one person forever and never losing that love is happier than loving each other, Kaiki-kun?”  
  
_Why are they all calling me -kun. These kids have no respect at all._  
Was Kaiki’s first thought.  
Then several flashed through his mind.  
He left the question unanswered.  
_Since that woman died from childbirth._ _  
_ _I had fallen in love, but I never lost that love._ _  
_

“You’re right, you even sound wise, but you know kids your age aren’t supposed to be wise. They’re supposed to be stupid. If they’re like that, then they’re easier for me to fool.”    
  
Was he trying to comfort me?  
Really, what an awkward man. Not everything had to be about money. I suppose for him it id though, but that was his narrative.  
What are narratives? They’re just lies. That’s why narrators are the biggest liars of all. You should watch out for that. Except for me of course because I’m honest to a fault.

 

😈

 

“Hey, Misogi how much of our relationship do you think is a lie?”  
  
『That’s a very deep question to ask at bath time.』Kumagawa said as he watched a yellow rubber ducky float by him in the bath water they were sharing. He reached for it, and put it on top of Junko’s head. 『What do you mean by that? Is this a Junko tries to break Kumagawa’s mind so he falls into despair moment, or a Junko can’t communicate moment?』

The situation was, they were bathing together. They had argued about who got to bathe first, until they reached a compromise about bathing at the same time. It should have been easy, they both said, they’re a couple they’d seen each other naked before they both said. However the moment they had both sat down to shampoo their hair at the same time, they immediately began to compete for the one seat that was there.  
  
That was when things had became awkward and it was difficult to talk. Bubbles floated in the air around them, reflecting back many colors of light, they were fragile things that could easily pop. it was a very flowery metaphor for love, but flowery metaphors are wasted on cynics like me.  
  
『You know if you’re feeling awkward you can leave. You don’t have to ask questions like that just to start conversation. You know for someone with such a trashy persona, you really do act chaste, don’t you?』  
  
“Same for you. For someone who calls himself naked-apron senpai you’re surprisingly pure. If I felt awkward it’s because I have to spend such an extended period of time looking at your meager body. I feel nothing at all bathing with a loser like you, but of course you’re probably consumed by lust. You want to lick me all over right now, don’t you?”

『As if! You’re the one that is charmed by my body in reality. You actually want to touch my scars all over, don’t you? You want to rub your hands all over me and feel the ridges and marks left in my skin and understand my life story from them. 』  
  
“I don’t think that at all. There’s no way I’d think so symbolically about something like that. There's no way I'd want to feel your pain as my own pain. There’s nothing to look at at all, in that skinny, svelte… curved almost in a feminine way body of yours, the hips that I can fit my hand on perfectly.”

『Don’t you start describing my bpdy! You’re obviously staring!』  
  
“As for you you’ve been staring at my boobs the whole time haven’t you?”  
  
『Impossible. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve seen them. You’ve never heard of the law of diminishing returns have you? There’s nothing special about them anymore, I know everything there is to know about those two clumps of meat on your chest.』  
  
“Don’t call them clumps of meat! How dare you say my breasts aren’t special, that’s a lie right, that has to be a lie! The only thing that surpasses the law of diminishing returns is my breasts, they get better every single time!”  
  
Junko stood up in the bath right then and grabbed Kumagawa by the hair, dragging him up onto the stool. She had decided all on her own that she would wash him, and he would wash her next and that would be the end of it. Once Junko decides things everybody else should just go along with her whims, things were much easier that way. That was her version of problem solving, how annoying.  
  
She grabbed the shower head and let the water fall over him. His thick black hair fell in front of his face. It had grown so much longer, and now because of it she could not see his eyes. Frustrating. Before even shampooing him, she messed her fingers between the strands of his hair and gave it a hard tug. “Senpai, you should really let me cut your hair already. I’m sure if I cut it it’d look a lot cooler.”

『That’s a lie. I’ll never look cool in your eyes no matter what you do to me!』Kumagawa snapped back at her from underneath the hair covering his face, and then tilted his head to the side. 『Wait, you still haven’t answered why did you ask me about lies earlier?』  
  
“Alright, I’m going to wash your hair don’t look. I don’t want some loser to lust after my perfect body.” Junko finally stood up, reaching for the shampoo with her one hand. She was wearing nothing, but Kumagawa wore a towel around his waist. She started to mess with his hair again with only one hand, making sure her fake nails dug into his scalp. “Hmmm, hmm, I can’t believe you keep insisting on talking instead of appreciating my perfect body that I’m trying to show off for you. Well you know both of us are habitual liars, we both can wear any mask we want so how do we know if any of our relationship is real?”  
  
She washed his hair out again with the shower head before giving him any chance to reply to such a heavy question. Heavy, heavy, people were so heavy and she was nothing more than a perfect doll, she was never expected to bear any kind of weight in the first place, just sit completely still and remain perfect. It was because she had tried cracks were forming. So heavy, she leaned her weight against Kumagawa’s back, pressing her chest against his back made slick and cold by the bathwater. “What if I’m no longer the real Junko?”

『You’ve always been a fake Junko, since when have you cared about that?』Kumagawa said rather insensitive, as if what had happened at the cafe last night had never happened at all. Of course that was Kumagawa’s way, to get over things quickly, to let them wash through him as if they never happened so he remained pure. No, it was not Kumagawa who was cold it was her, she pressed her ice cold skin against him clinging to him like he was the sole source of warmth in this world.

Skin on skin. It was indecent. They were supposed to be bathing. It even looked desperate. She had stopped caring about things like that. Even her arms were starting to wrap around him, trying to hold onto such a slippery thing. “For example the character archetype of Junko, rude, in your face, always talking energetically, selfish, self absorbed to the point that thinking the whole world revolves around her, reveling in despair, somehow full of life while dancing on the edge of a building, if I were to stop being those things then am I Junko anymore?”

『Junko, is that all you see yourself as? Just...some cartoony villain you were playing?』  
  
“The person you fell in love with, was someone who beautifully struggled to live and feel something despite seeing no meaning in the world at all, right? So… liiiiiike… if a new Junko comes along, who laughs like the old me, who is flawlessly beautiful like the old me, would you fall for her instead?”

『You’ve got a very flattering image of yourself I see, even when you’re trying to self reflect miss flawless beauty. Are you trying to say that your problem is you’re just too perfect for us mortal humans to comprehend?』  
  
“No… I’m being serious.” She rested her chin on the opf his head while holding him from behind still. Only then did she look in the mirror to see what her body was, some awkwardly long and thin thing, desperately grabbing onto another awkwardly shaped thing. The body of a normal girl, that she deceitfully dressed up in makeup and well fitting clothes to trick everybody into thinking she was beautiful. She was not a natural beauty like say Kurokami Medaka. At best she was naturally cute, and cute was an empty compliment. Getting called cute over and over again had emptied her out, spoiled her, allowed her to do whatever she wanted. She raised her stub of a wrist and brushed her blonde hair out of the way to reveal the empty eye she had sewn shut. “I’ve strayed away from my original characterization you know, the beautiful, pure, Enoshima Junko-chan who never had anything happen to her, who you fell in love with isn’t me anymore. I’ve got scars now. So, if a perfect Junko appeared in front of you-”

At that moment Kumagawa wiggled free from her grip, because he wanted to look her in the eye. Pervert. She had said no peeking at her perfect body. 『Junko, you’re wrong! I didn’t fall for your body, though your boobs are nice. I was lying earlier.』  
  
“I knew it! You can lie about anything else, but don't lie about my boobs they're sacred ground to which none can trespass on.”

『I transferred to so many different schools, I was so alone I didn’t make a single friend, until I met you. The person I fell in love with was my first friend, not some character traits you have… you’re the one I met, that I got close too. That’s why I didn’t want to let Junkai have you, because even if she acted precisely like you, she wouldn’t be my Junko.』  
  
“You sound so possessive. Stalker. How gross.”

『Love is gross, it’s sloppy, messy, you know. Sometimes, it leaves scars.』Kumagawa at that moment leaned forward and kissed her sewn shut eye. It was soft, far too soft a gesture than he should have been capable of. Her eyebrows fluttered on her opposite eye, and then just below his kiss her cheeks glowed with warmth. She could feel his warmth even after hd rew back.

『That’s why I’m happy,  that I could leave a scar on you.』  
  
“Technically, it was Fuyuhiko that did this… are you sure you’re okay with it? One day I might change so much you won’t even recognize my face.”

『Even if your face were ripped off, I’d still love you!』  
  
“You know sometimes you think you sound romantic but it’s just creepy.” Junko said, as she backed away from him too and grabbed him by the hair and dragged him back to the stool. She was just not done washing him yet that was all. It’s not that she was changing the subject because she was flustered. “Hey, if you’re fine with me being your first friend then why are you trying so hard to make friends with other people lately?”

『Well, it’s probably better if we both find more people to talk to. The more people we meet the more our world will expand, maybe it won’t be so boring anymore. Even if it’s just Yasuke-chan that we both become friends with. The world can’t just consist of the two of us.』  
  
“Oh, why not?”  
  
Enoshima Junko covered her hand in soap, and then slowly worked to rub her hand down his back. She made sure to feel every one of his scars as she did so, tracing the contours of them with her fingers. Though, that was just to clean them, it was proper skincare obviously.

『’Even if everybody else in the world hated me, as long as you loved me, in a world consisting of just the two of us I would be fine’ that’s just romantic nonsense.』  
  
“I feel like you’re vaguely insulting me here.”  
  
She lifted his thin and too long arm, and ran her hand down all the way washing the length of it. When she was finished she went back to his shoulders, rubbing extra deep circles into it with her hand.

『Well, I meant to insult Ryoko-chan and she is you, so, I’m directly insulting you more like. Besides it’s not like you stopped liking Yasuke-chan. You’re just refusing to talk to him because he’s more miserable that way and you’re a misery fetishist.』  
  
“Hmm, are you sure you want me to talk to Matsuda-kun? What if he sweeps me off my feet and I leave him for you.”

She moved in front of him and lifted up his foot, running her fingers between each one of his toes to make sure they were clean. Then, they switched and he was the one running his hands through her hair. He was far too rough though, and pulled her hair long enough to reach the floor while she was still sitting when it was down like this. He pulled her hair hard and clumsily, and she had to bite the inside of her lip to stop herself from saying anything.

『If that happens then I’ll just accept my loss as usual.』

“No, succumb to despair at the notion of losing me and cling to me even tighter.”

『Why would I do that? That’s what you want. How about I dump you and start going out with Yasuke-chan instead and then neither of us have to deal with you.』

“Noooo! Quit pretending you have happiness or free will outside of me, it’s like so totally annoying when people don’t realize they exist for my amusement.”

『Sure, sure.』Kumagawa’s only retort was to spray her with the showerhead, causing her much too long hair to fall all over her face and body.  
  
She crossed her arms. “Like seriously, what’s with you and Matsuda-kun lately?”

『I don’t need to describe to you the appeal of Yasuke-chan, you’re his childhood friend you should understand all of his moe-points by now. I've always felt this way about Yasuke-chan, he's really cool, like a cooler version of me.』  
  
“Well anyway, it’s not like we do everything together.” Junko changed the subject again on her whim.   
  
Kumagawa brushed her hair out of her face with his fingers and then tucked it behind her ear. He soaped up both of his hands, and then rubbed her shoulders once more. He slid his hands down her much too fragile looking back.  As his way too large, and way too rough hands clumsily slid down her hips she tried not to shiver.

『If we don’t do everything together why did you drag me into the bath with you?』  
  
She dug her red nails into the skin of her opposite arms, crossing her arms to hold herself back from feeling anything. Normally she loved feeling things, but feeling something in this moment in the bath time she had suggested mainly to mess with him and fluster him would amount to a loss.

“I simply thought you were way too stinky. You must not know how to bathe yourself, that’s why you go around everywhere smelling so sweaty all the time.”

『I’m not sweaty! Well, if being around me makes you feel more stable then I don’t mind it I guess..』  
  
Kumagawa lifted up her arms like she was a doll and slid his hands under them as well. Then he dropped down her arms, and ran his hands across her breasts. Rather than take the opportunity to fondle them, he seemed strictly to be cleaning them. He even brought a sponge with, and rubbed circles around them using the sponge only. She bites her lip again, but this time it’s frm impatient.  
  
“I’m sure you don’t want me to say this, in fact it will probably hurt you to say this, but that’s exactly why I’ll say it.”

『Hmm, you know just for once you don’t have to say the most hurtful thing possible in a situation.』  
  
Kumagawa suggested as he moved in front of her to wash her feet, but of course Junko ignored him.

“You carry too much weight on your shoulders. It’s not like you can solve everything and anything. In fact, there’s very little you’re capable of doing on your own, because you’re all like stunted and stuff. You can toss stuff aside, leave it alone, and know your place in the world… About Yasuke, about me, that actually has nothing to do with you you know that right? Even if Yasuke and I were to both kill each other again, or if we were to work things out and become friends again I doubt you can impact the outcome much at all.”  

『It’s not like I’m assigning myself that role. It’s not like I’m thinking ‘I should just meddle in Junko and Yasuke’s relationship and make sure things work out for them’ or at some point I thought ‘I’m going to become Junko’s stability’ I don’t think that far ahead. Things just kind of work out that way. I’m not exactly sure how we got to the point of me bathing you.』  
  
“I guess we haven’t solved the fundamental problem, and I do like that part of you that takes too much weight on his shoulders and then backs himself to the edge of a cliff all on his own.” Kumagawa finished with her breasts and then his hand moved dowards. He spread his whole palm across her belly. Then smoothly he moved over to her les lifting one leg up at a time, soaping it, and then moving down to the ankle and each toe. By the time he finishes with one leg, she idly wonders if he really is just trying to bathe her seriously without fooling around (odd for a fool like him) then he picks up her other foot and runs his fingers between her toes and she tries to swallow her heart. How annoying, her plans to mess with him weren’t supposed to backfire like this. Things should always work out for her enjoyment, well this was kind of enjoyable.

『Of course you like that part of me, because you’re a spoiled little princess, who likes to be carried around on my shoulders.』Then, as if he really was washing a princess, he brought up her pinky toe to her lips and offered a small kiss.  
  
Junko felt her heart skip a beat for a moment. Then kicked him in the face in surprise because she could not figure out what else to do to make her heart stop beating so fast. As Kumagawa lied on the bathroom floor Junko stretched.  
  
“Well, at least we solved the fundamental problem of how two of us are supposed to fit into the bathtub at the same time, if we can’t solve any more fundamental problems.” Junko said, as she lovingly ran herself a bubble bath in the one bath tub the hotel had provided her while Kumagawa napped on the floor.

Kumagawa actually was not unconscious. However, at that moment he had spotted his own reflection in the mirror.His guise, the guise of Kumagawa Misogi was not alone in that mirror.  Wrapped around his body, Ajimu Najmi was still there the same way she had wrapped himself around his shoulder. He was beginning to doubt whether Kaiki said was just a metaphor, or whether it happened to be true. That if he relied on All Fiction too much, he would cease to be human, he would become some kind of abnormal, and irrational being like Ajimu, he would become an aberration at her.  
  
Not wanting to think of that, and not wanting Junko to see his strange reflection if she could even see such a thing, he had decided the best course of action was to lie on the floor and not think of his problems for a little while.  
  
Finally, Kumagawa and I could agree on something. It was perhaps the smartest idea he had ever come up with in his life. It was a triumph over his diagnosis of idiot brain disorder. Now if only he just never got up again, then our interesting and well developed character conflict would be so easily solved. Being a human being is such a difficult thing, why can't the both of us just lie still until we become plants already?

 

😈

 

『I’m glad you came to talk with me, Yasuke-chan.』  
  
Junko had fallen asleep quickly after her bath. This time Kumagawa actually checked to make sure she was asleep, he had pulled her hair, flicked her on the forehead several times, pinched her cheek, and said that bears weren’t that cool or marketable as mascots after all.  
  
When Junko slept she slept like a rock there was nothing that could disturb her. She called it getting her beauty sleep, but Kumagawa thought it was just her brain’s remarkable efficiency again.  
  
So, he was sitting at the edge of the bed again and Yasuke sat at the other edge of the bed with Junko sleeping carelessly in between the two of them.  
  
“Can you take that damn sweater off at least?”

『I can’t, I’m naked under here.』  
  
“Nevermind I’m leaving.”

『Yasuke-chan! I wanted to talk with you! Talk with me! Why don’t you want to talk with me is it because you hate me? Am I uncool? Am I ugly? Is my voice unpleasant? Yasuke-chaaaaaaaaaaaaannn!』Kumagawa immediately threw a tantrum, crying, kicking, and everything.  
  
“Fine, fine! Damnit! How do you even cry so easily don’t you have any dignity at all?”

『I already told you Yasuke-chan, I’ll cry whenever I want that way you don’t have to feel bad about holding all your emotions in.』  
  
“I don’t care about promises like that.”

『Meeeeeanieee! Yasuke-chan is a meanie! Why are you always so mean to me I’m nice to you Yasuke-chan! All I want is for you to smile and you keep showing me that nasty scowl! Mean, mean, mean! Do you think it makes you look cool? Do you just hate me!』Kumagawa started to cry again.  
  
“Fine, fine! Damnit! I still don’t get you, you’re just fake crying rght? Like Junko always used to.”

『No, no they’re not fake. It’s just whatever I feel, I feel it the moment I do and then I let it wash all over me. Then, it’s gone just like that, it’s like a river always stays pure as long as it keeps running right?』Kumagawa tilted his head to the side. 『I’m true to my emotions. Even if the timing is bad even if it’s an ugly emotion, I feel it.』  
  
“Well you could learn to hold back your emotions a little bit it’d make you a less impulsive idiot.” Yasuke would advocate for the opposite end of the spectrum, never crying since you were eight years old, holding all those emotions deep in the pit of your heart, then having your heart ripped out by a girls’ red claws and then stomped on. That seemed like the better way ot deal with things. “It’s not like it matters anyway, all of my emotions were fake to begin with. The things I thought were important to me was just a lie put on by Enoshima.”

『No, no you totally don’t get it at all. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. What you said back then was uhhh ‘I’ve been fooled by Enoshima Junko all this time. Completely fooled… but even so, I couldn’t stay away from her… I thought I could save her. I thought I would be able to stop her… that’s what I was made to believe.’ right?』  
  
“How do you know about that?”

『Yasuke-chan when you so lovingly wrapped your hands around my neck, I didn’t die right away. I laid there on the floor for a little bit and watched your drama play out. You said ‘in order to protect her, I concealed evidence itself. Not only that… I even murdered people for her sake. In order to silence Soushun Murase, who knew the truth about the incident… it’s the same with Kumagawa MIsogi… oh that was me, for her sake I couldn’t let them live. That’s why I killed them...』  
  
“How do you imitate my voice so well, that’s creepy.”

『Wearing masks is my thing kind of, and I have a talented voice actress. Then you said, ‘it’s because of what she said to me. What she said to me when I lost what was once important to me. ‘From now on, I’ll be what’s important to you.’ It was ridiculously impudent… but thanks to that I was prevented from being all alone. She’s not friendly, friend, or a lover, but she’s someone just as important to me as any of those.’ That’s what you said, right?』  
  
Is Kumagawa Misogi my shadow. He had asked that once. Now he felt how constricting a thing a shadow was.Even if you tried to run towards the light to escape it, or run away, they would always be at your feet.  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I said so what?”

『’But it was pointless. My actions did nothing. What I did meant nothing to Enoshima...in the end, there was nothing she could do but to inflict despair on anyone involved with her. That's why this is despair...the fact that I finally understand that’ you said that as well. Oh, sorry for snooping on your private moment. You see when you broke my neck it got stuck like this...』Kumagawa grabbed his chin and pushed his neck so far that Yasuke could hear his bones physicall crack, creak, and rub up against each other. 『I couldn’t move it even if I wanted to. Well anyway what I wanted to say was, it didn’t mean nothing.』  
  
“What would you know? It had nothing to do with you. You didn’t even make things worse like you normally do, I bet it would have played out exactly the same without your involvement.”

『Who cares about hypotheticals you’re just avoiding what I’m saying. It’s because I was there that I know this. After she killed you, I revived just in time to see her embracing your corpse like a lover and she said. “There’s no way this would have nothing to do with you, after all you were the most important person to me of all.’』  
  
“What…?”

『I don’t think your feelings were fake, Yasuke-chan. Even if she manipulated you, that doesn’t mean they were fake. Your feelings are your own, your choices are your own… and Junko’s feelings are her own too… Ah, I don’t know how to explain it because Junko’s kind of dumb. She thinks she can trick herself into having feelings for the purpose of despair but it’s more like… 』  
  
“Stop it.”

『I don’t think she realizes, she can love someone and want to manipulate them for the sake of despair. That those emotions are mutually exclusive. Maybe she views her own heart as just another piece on the shogi board but that’s just… a dumb metaphor. Do you really think she spent all that time with you and felt nothing at all?』  
  
He could remember it all in quick succession. The times he had spent with Ryoko who was warm and soft, and smiled like a normal girl just like he had always tried to get Junko to smile and then all alone in his room, vomittting from the guilt of subjecting somebody he loved, of rewirting her brain and keeping her in a cage because he could not bare to lose her. The color drained from his skin, his hair was dry and started to come off in patches, he felt like a zombie walking and his only source of life was Enoshima Junko.  
  
He would have put up with all of that for her sake, he would have even died for her sake if he knew she would continue to live, all he wanted to do was matter to her a little bit. He wanted to be important to the person who was so important to him. He wanted to be her only one, but then she stabbed him right under the heart sliding a knife into his side, then she said right in his face _are you fucking kididng me? Don’t get s ahead of yourself! There’s no way in hell I’d go through this pain in the ass mess just to bring you to despair! What the hell are you thinking!?_

He had just wanted… he had just wanted to live for her. And he died. Meaning absolutely nothing to her.  
  
That was what he had been struggling with all this time. That was the lie he had come to accept, and for some reason the truth was far more worse. The fact that she could love him, and stomp all over him like that, that she did it out of love.

『Yasuek-chan, what you think is there was no hope from the start. That everything was rigged in Junko’s favor, but she’s just using hindsight to make it seem that way. I think, there was a chance that you could have been happy with her. I remember Ryoko-chan sleeping and mumbling in her sleep about flying to America with you. I think… some part of her deep in her heart, wanted you to defeat her, and escape with her. There was still a chance for you to be happy, you could have won.』  
  
“What the hell am I supposed to do with that! What does being told I could have been happy make a difference when I’m miserable and alone now!” Yasuke finally snapped. All the feelings that had died quietly in his death when he ran out of breath to say them, muttering, _c’mon what’s your answer Junko… please respond…_  
  
“It was all a lie okay! She promised she would become important to me but that was a lie too!”

『I don’t think it was a lie Yasuke-chan.』  
  
“How would you know, you’re a damn liar too!”

『It’s true but… umm, you know Kaiki-kun once said to me. Keeping promises is very important. It’s sublime. That’s why ever since I’ve always tried to keep my promises. That’s why, even though I’m mad at you for killing me, I haven’t raised a hand in retalliation against you because Rykoo-chan made me promise to protect you.』  
  
“Ryoko wasn’t even real. She was a lie too.”

『My promise to protect her was real, or at least I believe it was if you want you can keep chaining yourself up to Junko, I won’t blame you. But the feelings that make you want to do that, your want to fulfill your end of the promise, they’re real, they’re your own, it’s not some manipulation. They’re probably… realer than mine. I’m just the devil, I just don’t know any better...』  
  
The truth was far crueler than any lie. Kumagawa should have known that. He should have kept lying. It was kinder to lie, it was an incredibly kind lie that he was telling before this. Matsuda finally stood up and grabbed Kumagawa by the neck once more, but before he could wrap his fingers around as he was tempted to he threw the boy aside instead. “You’re the one Junko chose, not me! My relationship with her doesn’t matter anymore, I don’t matter to her anymore! So just hurry up and fix her already! Stop insisting you’re not important, you’re just half assing things and trying to push them onto me!”

He stormed out of the room and slammed the door. He clumsily tried to reach for the elevator buttons, because he had rented a room on an entirely different floor. There was no way he could stand sleeping on the same floor as Junko.  
  
_Junko did love me?_ _  
_ _I was important to her?_ _  
_ _And that’s why she_ _  
_ _K-k-k-k-k-k_ _  
_ _  
_ He was dead, and then suddenly he was alive. Kumagawa should have just left him dead, then he could run off and elope with Junko for all he cared he would be dead. It was an ending where everyone was happy. Now that he was alive everyone was miserable. It was like he was walking around all the time with a fatal wound. Even if Kumagawa undid the death the damage would not go away. And to make it worse, he had to constantly see his own shadow larger than him at his feet.  
  
People hate the images of themselves. He did not despise Kumagawa because he was wicked, because he laughed, because he said cruel things. He despited Kumagawa because he was kind, because he shouldered a lot of responsibility, because he moved to protect those he loved without thinking like it was natural to him.

Despite the fact that he kept pressing the button the elevator refused to descend.  
  
“I’ve hated Junko ever since we were children. That’s it. I’ve always hated her. She was always just using me. She’s talented, beautiful, popular with everyone, I’m nothing compared to her, she could have just picked anybody to be her childhood friend.”  
  
“Do you hate Enoshima Junko?” Fukurou was suddenly standing behind him. He put both of his hands on his son’s shoulders and whispered into his ear.  
  
“That’s right, I did love her. She was incredibly precious to me, I wanted to protect her, but also I didn’t want her to get involved with anybody else besides me.’  
  
“Do you hate Enoshima Junko?” Fukurou repeated.  
  
“That’s all, that’s all I wanted so…”  
  
“You hate her don’t you?”  
  
“No, it’s not that! Junko always smiled at me, even when I cried she just let me cry and held me, but the entire time she was just laughing to me. I thought she was being kind to me, but it was really just manipulating me! I was being made a fool of, because I wasn’t as great as she was! I realized it right after I went to hope’s peak, and yet I…”  
  
“You really hate her all along don’t you?”  
  
“ I thought if I could protect her, if I could prove my worth to her than our relationship would change! That she’d realize how important to her I had been all along. That’s what I thought! It was so pathetic. But what I did made me feel even more pathetic than before! I thought… I thought I just wanted to protect her, but it was all for me wasn’t it?”  
  
“You’ve always hated her from the beginning haven’t you?”  
  
“It was so I could keep living! But… this should be a good thing right? It’s not that I meant nothing to her, no, all along I was in her heart as well. I’ve beaten her. That’s all I wanted was to be important to her. I really was loved by the girl I protected. It’s Junko who’s wrong. She can’t do anything, she can’t feel anything, she’s messed up, wrong… Junko’s so pathetic, she can’t even be in love normally, she just makes everything around her as miserable as possible and even after going that far she still doesn’t enjoy herself. she’s the empty, ugly girl.  Por Junko. Poor pathetic Junko.”  
  
“You hate Enoshima Junko, don’t you?”  
  
“Stop it! I can’t stand that! Why did things end up this way! Why? Why? Why? Why? Don’t look at me anymore! Don’t love me!  I just feel pathetic, clinging to Junko’s feelings still.” Yasuke thrashed around until he hit his head and collapsed in the corner of the elevator.  
  
He was not even fit to be called larvae, he was an egg that had yet to be broken. Fukurou stood over him, dominating the entirety of the elevator blocking out all light. “What a pititful child. Just because your mother died, you have to struggle so much.”  
  
“No...noyooo…I wanted this. I wanted to become a neurologist, to protect Junko. I wanted to be someone talented, and smart so I could help study her brain and help her and if something ever happened to her like her mother I wouldn’t be useless that time. I promised her!”  
  
“Look at you, you’re losing your mind, you choose to do these things? You wanted your mother to tell you you were a good boy didn’t you? You wanted her to see how hard you were working to cure her condition and tell you how good of a child you were. How much you cared for her. You would have protected her, saved her, better than any of the adults if only you were older. Then she would not have forgotten you. You've spent your entire life trying to correct these circumstances.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“You just tried to cover up those desires by substituting Junko for them, but it’s worthless. Let me tell you this, even if Junko was a normal girl, even if she loved you normally, even if she was in awe of how much you protected her and even if you had saved her you still would feel this way. You’ll never feel whole, because you do not have a real family. You’re a lost child, your father abandoned you, and your mother lost her damn mind and forgot about you.”  
  
“Sssssshhhuuuuutuppppppp!”

“Allow me to point out what is obvious for the both of us. You don’t hate Enoshima Junko, you don’t even hate Kumagawa Misogi, it was not about them it never was. The only person you truly hate, is your mother. You hated the weakling that should have cared for you, that died and left you behind.  
  
“N.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.n.”  
  
“It’s too bad really. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re just a weak child that was forgotten about. There’s no place for you at all in this world.”  
  
“No. That’s not… Hahhahaha...Aahhh… it’s a fucking joke… go away, ghost… I don’t…don't laugh at me stop it... You were laughing at me all along weren't you? A lie. A lie. A lie. A lie. A lie. A lie. A lie. A lie."   
  
Yasuke reached up and slammed the elevator door shut button again and again, not wanting anyone to see him, not wanting to be seen, wanting to disappear. Curling up in the corner, making himself look smaller and smaller like a small child. His mother forgot his name, his mother freaked out when she saw him and started hitting him. He needed to walk on eggshells around her or she would hit him again. It wasn't her fault it was the disease. It couldn't be helped. He just wanted his mother to stop hitting him, to go back to being herself again, if he could protect her she would. He was hit by his mother, and then the girl he loved, the girl he wanted to save, brutally beat him until he died. He never once escaped the violence. He never once healed. He never once grew up. Don't look at him he was still a fucking kid.  
  
“Unhumourous. If this really is the plan then it’s lacking any kind of comedy.” A dull voice said on the other side of the elevator as the doors finally began to slide shut.  
  
Then, before they could close fully a boot appeared in the doorway, a black heeled boot with red lacings. It stopped the doors from closing, and Matsuda heard another voice speak out as he turned his head slowly. A second entirely different voice spoke up. “Wow, lucky you that’s despair you’re feeling right now. Sures sucks to be wimpy little powerless you, I guess you’ve got not choice.”  
  
“Who…?”  
  
“There’s nothing left for you to do but destroy the world!”  The girl who sounded exactly like Enoshima Junko said smiling exactly the same way that Junko always smiled at him.


	16. The Princess of Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaiki's speech is a reference to Koimonogatari.

Ahahaha sorry. In my recollection as a narrator I think I skipped a scene or two. It’s not like I was trying to lie, I’m still honest to a fault Matsuda the same as ever. I kind of lost track so. Who does this story center around again? Who’s is it? Did we ever decide upon that? I think we made a big fuss about it when Anshin’in-san was the villain and was declaring people main characters.  
  
Right, it’s about Enoshima Junko. It’s always about her, even when she doesn’t lift a finger even when she does not try to grow or change, even when she does nothing but predict and its simply everyone around her doing things for her acting the way she wants, the events of the story will always center around her.  
  
She doesn’t even need to start or resolve the conflict, because as long as she exists conflicts will start around her. If Kumagawa is described as somebody for whom everything goes wrong, then Junko can be described almost the same way only excising one word. Enoshima is somebody for whom everything goes.

Junko was by my side all along, but I never once understood her. Not until I came to Hope’s Peak Academy did I get a glimpse of the true her. But that’s not my fault right?  
  
Even when she was right next to my side, even when in the past she clung to me, she cried on my shoulder and asked me to defend her I always got the distinct feeling that no matter how close we were we were world’s apart.  
  
“Loving someone like they were your whole world.”  
  
What a ridiculous idea, there was no way Enoshima could have done that because she exists entirely in her own world. Enoshima is neither here nor there. Even when standing next to her you get the sense that you’re not standing next to anybody at all. Isn’t that saying the same thing as Enoshima is absolutely everywhere?  
  
If somebody were to tell me this entire world was the delusion of Enoshima’s mind I don’t think I’d even get upset about them pulling a lame twist like that. In fact I’d accept it all too easily without even questioning it.  She’s kind of like Haruhi, right? So self absorbed that everything in the whole world warps around her desires, to stimulate her own “self importance” but after doing everything she possibly could for that own misguided self worth she still considers her own self boring and tedious.  
  
That being said, she is who she is after all. She’s nothing more than herself. So, even if I were to die, reborn and start anew, even if I were to go back in time and undo my ever meeting her, the fundamental problem of her existence ends just like that.  
  
In fact all of this attempt to construct a story around her is a waste of time. I’m sorry for my lame-ass and rambly narration, I know I’m not as funny as I seem to think I am. If I were to write out this story more succinctly in a novel it would end with just one line. Enoshima Junko, is Enoshima Junko. And everybody lived miserably ever after. One line.  
  
However, this is not a novel so someone like me was not allowed to have such neat and tidy conclusions. Instead, things will only continue to get messier from this point on, like spilling your guts on the floor from a knife in your side and then having those guts smashed to pieces.  
  
I know I keep bringing that up but I’m not bitter or anything. Okay, that’s a lie. I’m one hundred percenter bitter. I’m sure if I were to be stabbed at this point, instead of blood salt would pour out because the chemical composition of my body has been fundamentally changed.  
  
Human relationships are like chemical reactions right, according to Jung. They can be basic or acidic then, and I’m the acid. As for this basic bitch, Enoshima Junko was playing around with a crowbar. Where did she find a crowbar? I don’t need to explain it, she’s Enoshima Junko that’s the only explanation necessary.  
  
As she waited for Kumagawa to wake up, as she always got her perfect twelve hours of sleep when she needed it and Kumagawa had a tendency to be kept up by nightmares most of the night and then sleep in suddenly Kumagawa’s phone rang. She slipped her hand into his pocket and plucked it out easily, observing the bear charm hanging form the corner. Of course she felt nothing about intercepting his calls, because she was his, and therefore his phone which was just an extension of him belonged to her.

“...”  
  
“I’m not speaking to Kumagawa, am I?”  
  
“How did you know that?”  
  
“If it had been him, he would answered immediately with a dumb joke. You on the other hand, the mysterious girl that’s always by his side, your response always seems to be to wait and watch what happens first.”

 _In essence he’s saying that I always analyze before acting, huh? How much does he know already?_ Her brain jumped to several different conclusions, it would do that whether she wanted to or not but basically she was proving his point. Then suddenly, she changed from a quiet persona to a flirtatious one. “Hey, Kaiki-san, are you feeling lonely?”

“Well it’s fine if it’s not Kumagawa. I just wanted to ask something of one of your group.”  
  
“What? I’m wearing black lingerie today.”  
  
“Nevermind, I want to talk to Kumagawa.”  
  
“He wears black underwear nowadays, though he used to always wear white. Do you think he’s going through some sort of phase?”  
  
“Wake him up from his sleep.”  
  
“He’s awake, mumble, mumble.”  
  
“Don’t mumble at me.”  
  
“Zzzzzzzuuu, zuuuu, zuuu.”  
  
“That’s not half asleep, that’s fully asleep.”  
  
“Well anyway, it’s good that I got you on the phone because there was something I wanted to ask you.” Kaiki had called to obtain information from Kumagawa, but of course not only did he not even get to ask the question he wanted but now the conversation was controlled by Junko. That was how it was, she was near impossible to keep up with in conversation and in all other aspects. “Hey, hey, what was your past with Misogi-senpai? Did you traumatize him? I wanna know… about every single person who ever hurt him… so I can hurt him worse.”

“Hmm, child can you tell me something? While saying a creepy line like that are you smiling on the other end of the phone?”  
  
“I have no idea what kind of face I’m making! None, none at all! What mask should Enoshima Junko-chan wear at this moment, what would fit her best, what would be the most Junko-like thing to say! I’ve lost track of that sort of thing!”  
  
“Okay… calm down. There’s no need to get so excited, it was a simple question.”  
  
“I’m the kind of gal that lives for excitement though.”  
  
“Sorry, whatever drama you’re imagining in your head isn’t the case. I just played with him like any child would, cat’s cradle, blocks, board games, hide and seek whatever he asked me to do I would play with him. When he wanted to talk about something, I listened to absolutely everything he had to say.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
“I see, I see. You sound like a child throwing a tantrum because she didn’t get the interesting response she wanted.”  
  
“There’s no need for me to throw that kind of tantrum, because even when things don’t work out the way I want, they work out the way I want in the end.”

At that moment Kaiki who was lounging on his chair holding the phone on speakerphone, rolled his eyes and thought again. _I don’t understand Kumagawa’s taste in women at all._

“Awe, just now you thought ‘I don’t understand how Kumagawa can have such good taste in women when he’s such trash’ or something like ‘How did he end up with such a high quality woman’, Did I get it right? Did I? Did I? Did I? I bet you’re thinking ‘Oh this woman must have some ability like ESP. What if I told you I did, I had powers straight out of a manga?”    
  
Staring forward with the eyes of a dead crow ut of the artificial cityscape in front of him, Kaiki remained silent.  
  
“Actually, that was a lie.” Junko played the second part of the conversation on her own, when he refused to participate.

 _Really, such an easy woman. That’s what I was thinking more or less, filtered through her own ego though._ “Well, I was thinking exactly that. You’ve got me. In fact I’m deeply personally invested in whatever kind of love triangle is going on between the three of you, I live my life obsessing over teenage drama.”  
  
“I knew it, but that’s because I know everything. There’s not a single thing I don’t know.”  
  
“Since you mention it though, it does strike me as kind of odd. The fact that he went for someone like you, instead of someone like Kurokami-san. You’re too, uhh.. Similiar. Most people I’ve met don’t like seeing themselves in others, fighting yourself is like trying to catch sea lights on a turbulent sea. Even if you keep missing.”

“...”  
  
“They say you feel true despair when you fight yourself. I wonder how they got past that.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Hey you’re smiling again aren’t you?”  
  
“I have no idea, really. Really, really, honest, really.”  
  
“A girl like you saying honest just makes my skin crawl for some reason.”  
  
“Saying that about a high schooler, how cruel. Adults in these kind of stories are always such bullies. Like you should be talking.”  
  
“That’s not true, I may be a liar but I’ve never broken a promise, and I’ve never lied to Kumagawa, not even once.” Kaiki made that bold kind of claim without an ounce of shame. “Anyway since I’m so interested in teen drama, then let me guess at some point Kumagawa really did have feelings for Medaka. The same way he had feelings for Ajimu. However, he’s since backed off on those feelings. That’s strange.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Inquisitive, curious, it was in her nature to devour information. Even if he did not explain it she would figure it out in a second anyway.  
  
“One would expect for a pervert like Kumagawa, even if he were to get a girlfriend he’d just keep flirting with all the girls in his harem to his heart’s content. He’d go for a harem scenario where not only did he get the committed love of a girlfriend, but also he got love poured on him unconditionally from other loved ones that he doesn’t have to show the same committment to in return.”  
  
“You have a rather myopic view of love. Tell me, are you disappointed in some other person and are just projecting him onto Kumagawa’s characterization?”  
  
“That has nothing to do with anything.”  
  
“Well, you see I demanded that Kumagawa-kun choose me over them. It’s pretty easy for me to say something like, ‘I want to be your one and only’ because I’m the only person that really matters.”  
  
“Even so it seems like an unfair deal. Kumagawa’s given up on Ajimu-san, and Medaka to the point of cutting them off and yet you still haven’t done anything at all about Matsuda to fulfill your end of the transaction.”  
  
“For you, interpersonal relationships are just bargaining.”

“I’ve never bargained once. Nor have I compromised. In fact there was someone I hated who once said life is a compromise. You’re avoiding what I said.”  
  
“Are you mad? Are you mad? Are you mad? Are you mad?”  
  
“Not particularly. Love is cheap, you can buy it in the store for a few hundred yen and  young love is particularly cheap. Talk is cheap too so we don’t need to talk about it.”  
  
“Cheap, cheap, cheap, you’re just like a bird Kaiki-san. You know what I’ve figured out what you remind me of, it’s definitely a crow. If I’m a bear, Misogi-senpai is a bunny, and Matsuda-kun is a hedgehog then you’re a crow. One who feeds exclusively on carrion.”  
  
“Are you some kind of furry?” Kaiki asked suddenly without thinking.   
  
Enoshima Junko did not answer him.

  
“Well, it doesn't matter really. Even if you solved the love issues between Kumagawa, Matsuda and yourself it wouldn’t solve the fundamental issue. Love is rather cheap after all. Children who are unloved definitely want to be loved, but at the same time that love shouldn’t be viewed as a fix all to their problems, or just like somebody desperate enough to give all their money to a con man who claims to be a ghostbuster wanting a supernatural fix to their problems they’ll be swindled. Either by a con man, or my love, people are naturally such suckers.”

“Are you a misanthrope Kaiki-san?”  
  
“No, I love humans. I’m a lover of humanity. I especially love the wasteful side of humans, the ignorant side of humans, human flaws that allow them to throw money away easily. Without humans there would be no money.”  
  
“So it wasn’t Kumagawa you’re worried about. It’s Matsuda. How touching. If you think I’m not exactly aware of how awful I’m being to both Kumagawa and Matsuda, by pitting them against each other by simply not doing anything, by letting Matsuda continue to boil over because of my inaction I’m not. I’m really disgusted with myself, frankly. What I did to him, what I continued to do to him, I really am trash, the worst. I don’t see why Misogi-senpai stays with me, because he’s aware of that more than anybody else.”  
  
“...”  
  
“He’d be much happier if he left me.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I’m sure he’d be much happier if he turned out like you and spent the rest of his life being hung up over Medaka-chan.”  
  
“Can I ask a question? What do you like about Kumagawa?”

“That part that isn’t like Matsuda-kun. Because he’s Kumagawa-senpai. If Kumagawa-senpai wasn’t Kumagawa-senpai I don’t think I would have fallen in love with him. Of course the reverse is true as well, I like the parts of Matsuda-kun that are nothing like Kumagawa-senpai. If Matsuda-kun wasn’t Matsuda-kun, I don’t think I would have fallen in love with him either.”  
  
“I don’t follow that well. Rightnow you’re all worked up and passionate. So much that you’re losing your mind, and about to destroy the world, but in the end the two of you might just simply break up over a small fight. I don’t think you’re going to get the kind of dramatic climax you’re looking for.”

“Are you sure you should be talking about climaxes with such a young girl?”  
  
“Please stop. If you’re flirting with me either to make Kumagawa jealous or because you see me as an older version of him, I don’t want to be involved in your complex. You might just to back to Matsuda. You might find someone new. Your refusal to do anything, it too might not be a product of despair like you think it is. It might be a product of your own ego, there are people who only ever think of themselves and therefore when they need to address their behavior towards someone else instead of thinking of that all they do is sit around and self loathe. Instead of despair it could just be your own egoism that stops you from doing anything. In fact you might find something more interesting if you stop self loathing, get outside the bounds of self, and get involved instead.”  
  
“I’m enough of a calculating women not to read too much into that statement.”  
  
“That’s fine if you don’t. Giving your thoughts is called giving your two cents is it not? It’s extremely cheap, so I can give my two cents as much as I want but there’s no guarantee that anybody will find worth in it.”  
  
“Actually, I’m too much of a calculating women so I read into it far too much. I can’t help myself, upupupu, I’m such a clutz. You know Kaiki-san if you were worried about Matsuda-kun, why not go and talk to him? If you want Kumagawa-senpai to learn to stop taking others problems on for them why did you immediately decide to call Kumagawa-senpai with your worries about his friend.”  
  
“...It’s not just your eyes that are creepy, you’ve got a good nose too. That’s troublesome."  
  
“Well thank you for that Kaiki-san. Even if you didn’t tell me anything, I think I figured out what went wrong with you and Kumagawa-senpai. You like children, and you like guiding people don’t you? But you don’t want to do anything that would require more commitment than tossing out a few cheap words like that. In that sense aren’t you the one not overcoming yourself?”’

“...”  
  
“It’s annoying. Don’t treat me like a child.”  
  
With that Enoshima Junko hung up winning the conversation. On the other end, Kaiki blinked his dead crow eyes staring at the phone. He had meant to call Kumagawa and voice his concerns over Matsuda, but instead he felt like he the con-man had been swindled. He had given Enoshima Junko as much information as he wanted for free and got nothing in return.

He was a liar of course, and a swindler, but he hated thieves. Taking things without paying for them? What a terrible crime, even he who loved money would not think of acquiring something without having to spend money.

😈

 

Kumagawa had always dreamed of waking up next to a loved one, and seeing her smile the first thing in the morning. Someone who was happy to have him around. As he was used to sleeping alone in piles of trash, or waking up in unpleasant situations. And, as an extra bit of trauma in middle school when he went on field trips with other students he could hear the kids who were assigned to room with him secretly complaining to the teachers and asking the rooms to be changed around.

Having a loved one make sure to wake him up in the morning when he overlsept, it was something he had always dreamed of. So, when Enoshima Junko woke him up by slamming a crowbar into the pillow next to him he greeted her with a smile. 『Hmmm, Junko did you get bored of playing up the ‘dere’ part of your personality too much recently and decided you wanted to show off more of the ‘yan’ instead?』  
  
“No, no, this is definitely dere. I wanted to wake up the boy I love in the morning. D-don’t peek, it’s all leaking out of me, my dere is overflowing.”  
  
The younger of despair sisters.  
The littler sister.  
Hysteric.  
Prone to peeks of emotion.  
Uninterested in the entire middle of the emotional spectrum, she finds the color gray to be drab.  
She calls for stories with nuance but she herself isn’t interested in nuanced feelings at all.  
All she wants is stark black and white contrasted against each other.  
Describing all of those personality traits doesn’t matter though, because in the end she’s just another fake. Fake like Kumagawa is, like Kaiki is, everybody in this story is fake but me good old honest to a fault Matsuda.

From her attack on the pillow, the crowbar was left stabbed straight through.

『You’ve got tsun and dere and yan messed up from the start! Your understanding is all backwards, like a twisted reflection in the mirror!』  
  
“Awe, are you breaking out the bedroom talk already? You just woke up, boys are so eager.”

『We should really stop intermixing theme talk and dirty talk so much, it’s really going to get us confused at the worst time.』  
  
“Well apparently the defaults of my personality aren’t set and configured like everyone else’s.”

『Ah… Junko, so you were bored waiting for me to wake up… but you didn’t run off and go talk to Junkai-chan did you? Ah, that’s good, I’m so happy.』Anothe rsign of Kumagawa’s idiocy. After arguing about her attempt to crush his head with a crowbar for a moment in order to wake him up, he acted like he had completely forgotten about it and changed the subject. That was no lie though, it was his true sentiment, he truly was happy for her sake.  
  
He could get mad at her, without holding a grudge. He could be happy for her without holding onto sentimentality. He simply flowed from one moment to the next.

If you were to write a book about Kumagawa Misogi’s stupidity, it would be quite a bit longer than the book on Enoshima Junko, but as a requirement the words ‘Enoshima Junko’ would have to appear somewhere within the book.  
  
One could say he was stupidly in love with her if they were a romantic. If they were a cynic (read: me) they would say that love’s stupid and girls have cooties.  
  
『Oh, that’s right you wanted to talk about it so let’s talk about it.』At that moment Kumagawa sat up on the bed. Junko had yet to apply her makeup, so what he faced was nothing more than a plain, normal, and uninteresting female high school student. The fact that he could stand being around her even when she was like this, that he smiled like normal, was a result of his terrible taste. 『About that time on Jabberwock.』  
  
Perhaps Kumagawa was on a high from being told that he was the only one in their group of three that was any good at communication. Do people just… do that? Talk about their problems normally? Without any dramatics? Junko tilted he head to the side playing dumb (actually the character archetype she was playing was cute ditz), “Are you making an Alice in Wonderland Allusion?”

『Fine, you probably won’t talk even if it’s under torture. Then this time, I’ll talk and you can play the straight man.』

“Gosh, am I really prepared for such a role? Is it a sign of my character development that I’m called to be the more normal and grounded one that yells out comebacks?”

『Let’s see. Basically for the first fifty one rounds you reacted the same way every time. You called on me to entertain you, but you also didn’t want to get close to me. You’d sleep with me without any attachment and then push me away. I started to think, Junko might just be someone incapable of loving anyone in a way that isn’t loving herself.』  
  
“What kind of ice cold queen image do you have of me!?!?!” She paused for a moment. “Hey, hey was that a good response! Am I doing this straight man thing right?”

『That’s why I started to say ‘I’m fine with loving Enoshima, as long as she doesn’t love me back, in fact I prefer it that way.’ I probably thought I sounded deep, but in fact that kind of faux-deep statement was just me running away.』  
  
“Are you saying we all have a tendency to wax poetically on theme and try to sound deep and navel gazey when it’s all just nonsense because as a whole we’re a group of teens trying desperately to read meaning in our lives that we have little to no control over? Don’t reveal that secret it’s way too depressing!”

『Mm, in a way it was like avoiding your rejection. Just saying ‘There’s no way Junko can love me back’, as I became more and more dependent on you for my sanity I started to dehumanize you and started to try to erase any possible way you could reject me. Oops, how clumsy of me, I’m sorry!』  
  
“Don’t apologize for that kind of complicated characterization like you’re just some kind of cute ditz whose only flaw is clumsiness! What kind of person can look away from somebody’s human traits like that on accident! Doing things on accident is just too loose characterization!”

『Oh, I’m glad Junko. You’re really committed to this straight man thing, you’re even yelling about good writing like I always do. Anyway, I think that was… the embodiment of my despair really. Trying over and over again, and yet failing more and more each time, not even seeing an escape, you’re unable to lose, and you’re also unable to win. ‘Not giving up’ becomes a flaw that’s twisted against you. I feel kind of embarrassed that you were subjected to that too.』  
  
“Embarrassed, huh? Embarrassed! You’re just embarrassed over the most boring seven years of my life! You could feel a little bit of remorse.”

『Well uh… I’d like to give a conclusion or a punch line, but I don’t have one. Even now I don’t think my feelings have settled. I don’t think I’ve escaped  Jabberwock at all. I know that’s ungrateful since you came down to rescue me and everything but… it feels like any moment the killing game might start up again.』  
  
The point of the killing game was to show that even good people could become murderers. Anyone at any time can become the culprit. The hope of escape could quickly turn into the despair of having to kill your own friends to achieve it. Kumagawa had been murdered by every single one of his fifteen friends at least once.  
  
To him thought it was confirmation of what he already knew. That he existed to be the punching bag to other people’s flaws, that he was a scapegoat to be hated. All of those fundamental bad ideas that he had absorbed over the years, were confirmed again and again by the killing game and exacerbated in his own head.

“Misogi… senpai…’ Junko dropped the straight man act for a moment as she looked at Kumagawa’s trembling back. Perhaps she really did have a sliver of good intentions in her in that moment and reached out to his shoulder with them.  
  
However Kumagawa who had turned his back to her did not see Junko clamping her fingers over his shoulder. Again it would happen, the faceless culprit would murder him from behind. He would be dragged through an investigation where he had to suspect all of his friends. He would be dragged into a class trial where they would all have to argue and break one another to find the truth. Then, somebody else would die no matter what they did. Succeeding, just meant another lost, surviving meant losing more, losing a vital part of yourself and continuing on and on with the missing pieces. Being told over and over again you had to keep going by people who had far more pieces intact than you did, and then being called lazy, or selfish, for not being able to deal with it? Hadn’t he already dealt with enough already? He dealt with more in his childhood than most adults did in an entire lifetime. He dealt with that, and while he was dealing with that people continued to pile on more and more, and then they told him that he was dysfunctional for not being able to deal with all of it. He was expected to grow up like everybody else did, even though it was a highly likely chance he would not even live to reaching the age of a grown up. Then the hands, the hands of the culprit they were on him, they were all over him, they were sneaking up on him from behind. Those hands, those hands, those hands. He grabbed Junko and twisted her hand, throwing her over his shoulder.

Out of breath he stared at her, and then realized he was not on Jabberwock. They were not in the cabins that were set up for them by the killing game. They were in a hotel in Towa City, and he was supposed to meet Kaiki later this morning. He was just violent to Junko, pretty Junko, untouched Junko, the Junko who he already thought himself unworthy of touching because he would only dirty her.

『...』

“This is where you’re supposed to say, oops, my hand slipped! I’m such a clutz!” Junko said as she simply knocked her fist against her head and stuck her tongue out like a ditz.

『Don’t pretend nothing happened, I’m only going to hate myself more.』  
  
“Yep, I know! What a fun kind of despair, to watch the person I love be consumed by your own self hatred. You know, the more you hate yourself the more I’ll love you, but the opposite is true as well the more you love yourself the more I’ll hate you.”

『You’re not being very helpful you know.』  
  
“Because I go around helping people, that’s my characterization.”  
  
In the end Junko is Junko. I’m sure Kumagawa thought something like that as he smiled at her. It was oddly refreshing when he was always stuck inside his own head, and involved, held back by his own problems to have somebody who did not care about them in the least.  
  
He had too much empathy for someone as damaged as himself, that empathy only became further damaged. So, Junko’s complete lack of empathy was refreshing to him. Kumagawa would put it this way, ‘It’s nice to have somebody laugh at you about your problems.’  
  
He only thinks that way because his whole life is a joke, though.  
  
“I don’t get you at all. Whatever negative karma comes my way, I definitely deserve it, yet you look so afraid of hurting me.”

『And then Junko says, I can’t wait to exploit that fear to drive you into another corner where you take too much on your shoulders, then I bet you’ll show me something really interesting.』

“Oi, oi, don’t predict what I say. If I wanted to talk to myself I’d just talk to Junkai again. You know Misogi-senpai…” At that moment Junko grabbed a pillow and hid her face. She probably had no idea what expression she was making and did not want Kumagawa to see either if she herself did not know. She was a picky girl like that. “The times where you died were so boring. I barely left my cabin and I only showed up to trials when Monokuma-sensei threatened me to.”

『Isn’t that basically your way of saying you didn’t give a shit when I died?』

“No, it was just… I didn’t feel the kind of despair I thought I was going to feel from losing you, it didn’t sustain me. At first it was because I thought I didn’t care that much about you, as I thought I did. Like maybe I just built up the idea of Kumagawa Misogi as someone special that interesting things happen around in my head and when you just died it disappointed me… but afterwards I realized that empty feeling it was loneliness.”

『Aaahhh?』  
  
“Well, you’re kind of like me so when you’re around I feel weirdly less incomplete. Even though my characterization is at the root far different from everybody else’s in this world.”

『What a self absorbed way to answer that question.』  
  
“Now we’ve switched back and you’re playing the straight man, Misogi.”

『Instead of arguing over top or bottom, people should be arguing over whose the abnormal one, who’s the straight man, and whether or not they can switch and are flexible enough to play either role.』  
  
“Mmm, you don’t really perform well but you are flexible I guess that’s one good thing about you.”

『I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing anymore!』Kumagawa took a deep breath and then this time changed the mood on his whim. Since he was not supposed to be playing straight man to Junko’s antics in this conversation. This was their attempt at an honest conversation of their feelings however, so it was obvious a few jokes needed to be included. 『Junko you know, what I told Ryoko-chan back then that I had a shitty memory and forgot a lot of things? I wasn’t really lying to her, or even foreshadowing all fiction. That’s the truth. I think everything that’s been too much for my brain to handle, I just compartmentalized it or split it off from me way too quickly without really dealing with it.』

Junko kept her face hidden underneath the pillow but murmured out some kind of reply like. “Mumble mumble mumble mumble…” Not actually mumbling, just saying the word mumble.  
  
Kumagawa had to lift the pillow from her head. The expression she was hiding was completely empty, with no movement of her facial muscles at all, like Kamukura’s. 『Hey listen to me, don’t get bored so easily. This is some painful self reflection you know.』  
  
“Well I do like your pain.”

『There were times though that I couldn’t even do that. Having to bear everything alone was to much, so my mind started to break and I started talking to my rabbit. I think the starting point would be admitting that Yasuke-chan, you and I are all more broken than we let on to being.』  
  
“You’re constantly talking about how broken you are though, and to think you could be even more broken than that. How scaaaaaary.”

『Yeah, you know Junko I evens started to hear your voice in my head towards the finale though… but in the end it was all just me. Those voices were my own. I wasn’t seeing a representation of my past, or a brain ghost junko… just compartmentalizing and giving voices to what I could not face head on. Yeah, that’s why… that’s why... your tendency is to keep silent an keep everything in your own head.』

“...”  It was an emotional moment but unless Junko was reading the emotional beats like they were written on a script, or plucking the strings to produce the notes she wanted to hit she had trouble participating in them.

『Talk to others okay, it probably won’t fix it but... hmm, it’s like this you’re always thinking about how to make yourself miserable but I’ll show you people can make each other miserable in an an infinite amount of unpredictable ways!』  
  
“How despair inducing!"

Kumagawa took her hand in his. He got in her face as if he had no sense of perosnal space, no as if there was no borderline between their bodies that could be called the AT Field to begin with. Even speaking as pessimistically as he was, he was shining brightly like a star and sounding like an optimist.『That’s right, human connection is the ultimate despair! You’ll just go deeper, and deeper, and deeper and yet you’ll never run out of ways to be hurt by it.』  
  
As he leaned down to brush his lips against her fingers, she blushed just from the warmth on her ice cold skin.

“You’re doing a good job, failing at being my knight.”

『You honor me by pretending to be a princess.』

Kumagawa really was like a star. He was bright and spontaneous, changing from one moment ot the next like there were a million chemical reactions going on in him at once. She had no idea at all why people thought she was impulsive, why they thought she was energetic, she always thought she was too stiff, too rigid, too unwilling to change. Even impulse was pre-scipted on her part, even the utter ruin she could bring somehow fell perfectly into order, she was such an existence that somehow even chaos around her seemed to fall into a pattern.

Nobody saw the real her, huh? She might have been belligerent enough to complain about that at one point or another. Of course they didn’t, she knew her real self was boring so she disguised herself. She played up the roles she invented and shifted her personality around whenever she liked. because the real her would probably never do anything that interesting, the real her would not strive for anything, the real her had given up a long time ago. She would probably be just like Kamukura, sitting in one spot, looking down on the world with disinterested eyes. A boring and flat character.

The real her was not even behind the curtains. She was not in the dressing room. She was sitting in the shadows somewhere far away from the stage. She was hidden there, concealed, and cold. That was why Kumagawa was like a star who had fallen from above. He really did just fall into her life and started to shine light on things she did not want to see. Things she had always been perfectly good at obstructing her vision and looking away from.  
  
However, his light was not too harsh. She was a fragile girl actually, any attempts at empathy from others were too heavy for her, she took understanding, and compassion for her condition as an insult. People like Naegi Makoto were too bright, that brightness burned her. It reminded her of what she could never have, of how she would never be like, the light and fluffy emotions enjoyed by the vast majority of people that her body simply would never enjoy. A reminder of the humanity that they had and she did not. In that case it was better to be seen as inhuman, more like a force of despair that was either overcome or given into, something which only the words revere and worship applied to.  
  
Then there was this boy. This star. That fell from the heavens in front of her inexplicably one day. Just like her, that boy had contended with the feeling of not being a complete human. Rather than being burned by his humanity, by his warmth, instead she was able to bask in the gentle glow of a tiny star that seemed to embrace all of her at once. Yet, also embraced none of her.  
  
The humanity that she was lacking, she started to see it in this person. Yes, Kumagawa Misogi was not a doll without a heart. He was a human being.  
  
She was the doll without a heart. She was the one lacking in humanity, not everybody else around her. She was the one doing the same thing over and over again, unable to change in an interesting way. She was not even able to feel things, just like a doll would.  
  
Yet, suddenly she wished to be human again. Did she… When did she start wishing that? That she could simply put this star in her chest and use it’s warmth to melt over her ice cold veins, and the pulsations of an unpredictable star to pump blood through her body again.  
  
Light. Everybody reached towards the light because they could see it, but she couldn’t. She could not see it the same way everybody else did, and it was annoying when they insisted she could.  
  
Perhaps she had found it though, perhaps she had finally found a light of her own. That’s what it felt like, that’s why Kumagawa was a star to her. Kumagawa… my light? Now that really does send me into despair just thinking about it. The girl immediately thought once she reached that conclusion.  
  
Well, having sentimental thoughts like this towards someone, well making promises like this towards someone only meant for Enoshima Junko that they would be ruined later. Coming to an understanding just meant she would have a misunderstanding later. Meanings existed to be dirtied around her.  
  
Enoshima Junko was still Enoshima Junko.  
She was unfailingly Enoshima Junko.  
She was consistent in her inconsistencies at least as long as they suited her.  

 

😈 

 

Kaiki looked forward with the eyes of a dead crow.  
  
Kumagawa looked back at him with the eyes of a dead fish.  
  
The atmosphere stunk with the rotting of both of them. Even so Kaiki was technically superior as crows ate fish. The more Kumagawa stared into his eyes the more he could not help but have the feeling that he was going to be devoured by them.

『Kaiki-kun I don’t get the point of talking by candle light like this, I haven’t gotten any closer to being able to use styles. Maybe you should have taught Medaka-chan after all, I’m no good at studying.』  
  
“Smart people don’t need to study, they’re smart already on your own. You have to work three times as hard just to pass as normal and be able to do what everyone else does without thinking.”

『I know it’s true but did you have to say it so directly! What is it with everybody that they just say whatever they want around me with no manners at all. The world is absurd and so I’m playing the world’s straightman.』

“Anyway…” Kaiki poured a small dish of Sake and took a drink from it. “Do you want some?”

『I can’t I’m just a kid.』  
  
“Legally, you’re twenty though. In the eyes of the world you’re an adult.”

『Is this a trick question? Is drinking the sake going to help me unlock some new super power, or clear up my chakra so I can learn a new style move?』  
  
“You’re still stuck on shonen jump. I already told you, deceiving fools like you is easier than you think, easier than graduating from shonen jump.” He continued to sip casually. “So, how is your finger.”

『Still broken. Is that what you were trying to teach me? That a broken finger hurts? Wow, so deep, deeper than evangelion even.』  
  
“That’s the point exactly. To humans everything is narrative, but also… humans are fundamentally alone. They can only see the world through their eyes, they can’t understand another person completely no matter how well they try.”

『Are we going to start with the nihilism again?』

“No, I think that’s a wonderful thing. It’s because humans are so bad at understanding one another that deception exists, and it makes them easier to swindle.” Kaiki smiled, it was the smile of a shark sniffing out blood on the water. The way he smiled was to draw his lips back and to show the empty space in his mouth and awkwardly display his fanged teeth. “However because we’re fundamentally alone and wish to understand others, to humans everything is communication.”

『I thought everything was a metaphor.』  
  
“Metaphors are just communication.”

『I get the feeling you’re just making this up as you go along and trying to make it sound like it’s something good.』  
  
“I wouldn’t be a con artist if I wasn’t.” Kaiki finished with his dish and instead picked up a red string. He started to play with it in between his fingers making intricate shapes.

『Is that cat’s cradle?』  
  
“Do you wanna play? Too bad your finger is broken.” Kaiki said as he made a criss crossing shape with the red string. “What I’m saying is every single interaction between human beings is some kind of attempt at communication, even violence is communication, but it breaks the receiver don't you think? Don't you think, damaged goods? Stunted receiver?.”

『A thirty year old man who spends most of his time conning children shouldn’t get to call me stunted. Who thought it was a good idea for a con man to serve as a mentor to an impressionable young child anyway, that sounds like a terrible premise for a manga.』  
  
Kaiki stared at Kumagawa through the gaps in the cat’s cradle he was holding in front of his face. “Kumagawa, when you let others hit you, what are you trying to say to them?"

『I was trying to tell them about my great masochism.』  
  
“Please stop talking like that when there’s an adult in the room.”

『You’re right, I shouldn’t hurt myself so easily because if I break my fingers like this I can’t fondle Junko’s boobs.』  
  
“I see why you and that girl get along so well you’re cut from the exact same annoying cloth.” Kaiki stopped playing cat’s cradle and instead, wrapped the string around one of his fingers and pulled it far too tight. “The walls between people are too thick and sometimes people beat their fists against them."

『It sounds like you're eluding to a  conclusion you want me to reach on my own. It's a good thing I'm amazing at playing dumb!』

“I'm sure you already know. One can only beat their fingers against a wall for so long before their fingers break.” As Kaiki was backlit by the candle’s flame, he looked like the shinigami that had come to pinch out Kumagawa’s last flickering flame in between his two skeletal fingers.  
  
He was beyond a dead crow. He looked like a crow that had been taxidermied and sewn back together. Despite being the real thing, despite being veritably alive at some point every bit of life within him now looked to be fake, preserved by artificial things and chemicals.

『If I was stronger I could take it.』  
  
"No, you can't. You can't take it and you've been relying on all fiction to bandage up your fingers." 

『Then how do I… then how do I win? If I can’t fight anymore, I’m not good for anything else, and my only good point is enduring pain.』  
  
“You have to lose.”

『What? To win I have to lose?』

“Lose and accept the loss. You’ve caught yourself in a cycle where to avoid losing your mind, you’ve coped by never truly caring if you win or lose. Sometimes you’re going to have to lose things you care about, you’re going to have to fail to protect people, stop seeing yourself as the protagonist of a shonen manga and accept that you’re weak.”

『I always… I always...』  
  
“You did and you did not. You prided yourself as being weak, secretly you thought you were strong didn’t you? You treated it like a secret you were holding in your heart, an inner strength you hid from everybody. You were waiting for a moment to go ‘actually, i’m quite strong’ and then you thought you’d show them. You know Kumagawa, you act like the love you’ve finally found is such a special and unique thing for you but really people fall in love as often as dogs bark.”

『It’s a cheap thing, huh? That’s unfair you know telling me to face pain when I’ve already faced more pain then you have in your entire life.』

“Yeah, I’m a cold guy like that.” Kaiki said unflinching. “Who cares if you were playing fake knight all along though, when your princess was a princess of lies.”

『That’s true but I’m the only one who gets to call her out like that.』Kumagawa smiled pleasantly. Kaiki had seen the pure white boy show him so many of those same smiles. It always confused him that a boy who should be crying inconsolably, could have such a pretty smile. 『If you make Junko cry old man, I’ll kill you.』  
  
“That’s fine, if you beat me over the head with a crowbar at least let me know first so I can file life insurance before the fact and collect it afterwards.”

『Still, just telling me to forget everything and let go of everything it’s like you want me to end up a lonely old bastard like you!』

 

😈

 

With no drama at all and hardly any warning Matsuda Yasuke appeared in her doorway. He leaned on the frame, one arm, there was something uneven about the way he was standing. “Junko, I want to talk about my mother.”  
  
“Jeeez, what’s with guys like you it always ends up being about the mom?”  
  
“You said right before I died that my mom got that way because of you, was that the truth or were you just bullshitting like you usually do?”  
  
“...”

He remembered the last time he had asked this. He felt his insides draining out of him, all those complicated feelings he held for Junko were just going to become a mess on the floor. Thy led to nothing at all. As he grew more and more grave, Ensohima grew ecstatic. She watched him with her chin cupped in her hands like he was an entertaining show.  
  
“Just tell me. It’s not like I mattered much to begin with, so why don’t you just tell me?”  
  
“...”  
  
“There was nothing special about my situation. Sure, I was a talented kid with a sob story but that’s like half the kids at Hope’s Peak at this point. You know at first learning I was nothing to you hurt a lot but I realized it’s a lot better that way. My problems aren’t a big deal, nothing that I dealt with isn’t the same as everybody else dealt with.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I mean dying parents, sick parents, dead parents, getting abandoned by parents, getting hit by parents society is rife with those kind of people. It’s not like my problems stand out as anything in particular. In fact that I lived this long and developed an extraordinary talent makes me already more fortunate than most people living in my situation.”  
  
“...”  
  
“There’s nothing at all unique or special about my pain, except in how self absorbed I got about it. In how I acted like I was the only person suffering in the whole academy and that’s why I needed to protect you more than anything like my emotions were the only ones that mattered. That’s all, that’s the only thing unique about me is that I reacted worse than everybody else did to problems everybody deals with.”  
  
“...”  
  
“The only thing rare about my problem was that it happened to be a rare disease that afflicted my mother, but that was all. It could have been anything, it could have been an alcoholic father, parents who work too hard and get treated poorly at their jobs and come home and take it out on their kids, I could have had my genius used and exploited by my parents for their own benefit. There's nothing at all extraordinary about it! Society is filled with… forgotten children… just like me. Even if it was not caused by some disease I’m still sure I would have been forgotten.”

“...”  
  
  
“In fact I’m not even angry at Ryoko for forgetting about me, or for not keeping your promise to remember when you forgot everything else. My problems are ultimately tedious, forgettable.So just tell me already, tell me if you were the one who did that to my mother.”  
  
“...”  
  
“It’s fine. I won’t blame you. I already know I’m the kind of weak person who blames everything on his parent’s for how things turned out. Hey, hey, did I ever tell you about what happened? How they left me all alone in that house to care for her? Nobody even stopped by.”  
  
“...”  
  
“She’d forget who I was and scream that I was somebody’s kid and hit me until I left her alone, and even then I’d have to hide the bruises. If a doctor came by on one of his visits and saw them then they’d take me away from her and there’d be nobody left to take care of her.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I did everything I could. I even told lies for her sake, and pretended to be someone else’s child when she forgot me so it wouldn’t trouble her. I just wanted to protect my mother. I was just a kid you know? But even so eventually my mother stopped wandering around the house.”

“...”  
  
“I was already used to cooking my own lunches but I had to cook hers too. She sat in one corner of the room and never left it, she was completely dark. Then when when I brought her food, I would have to hear her mutter on the other side of the door. ‘Parents can’t choose their children, parents can’t choose their children, parents can’t choose their children.”

  
“...”  
  
“I tried really hard that entire time. I fought really hard against thinking ‘I would be better off if my mother was dead’. I tried over and over again to think that it was just the disease talking and she’d never think that about me. I still wanted to love her even after all of that. I tried so hard so… why wasn’t I… able to protect her?”  
  
‘...”  
  
“Do you know when she killed herself I didn’t notice? I didn’t find the body until days afterwards.”  
  
“...”

  
“I just kept walking on eggshells around and taking care of a damn corpse. I didn’t notice until one of the doctors barged into our house, and then asked what kind of messed up child I was… It must have been because I was happy, yeah, I was so happy to finally be free of that. I was elated.”  
  
“...”

“Hey, hey, you don’t give a damn right so why not just tell me? Just get rid of me, Junko and you can go run off and be happy with Kumagawa. I’d be happy even to be a stepping stone on your road to happiness for you.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Why can’t you tell me if it has nothing to do with me!”

  
“There’s no way this would have nothing to do with you.”  
  
Enoshima Junko said a hint of sadness laid somewhere in her murmuring voice.  
  
“After all you were the most important person to me of all…”  
  
Those were her true feelings.  
  
Kumagawa had been right, he had tried to warn him. If Matsuda had listened even just once he would have realized, the only time Junko says anything kind at all was when she wanted to hurt people. Every single part of her was like some sharp angle, even her softness was sharp just a weapon to be used.  
  
Even her love, was just a shougi piece with the word love carved into it.  
  
Yasuke covered his ears with his hands. “Nonononono, don’t say it.”  
  
“I love you sooo much, Yasuke-kun.”  
  
The words he wanted to hear the most. The words he wanted to hear the least. He had walked right into it, he had shown Junko the perfect place to hurt him all over again, she would not even let her claws out of him even in death.  
  
Even the toys she threw away still belonged to her.  
  
“What do you want me to fawn over you like Ryoko did? Would that make you happy?”  
  
Happiness was an entirely worthless thing to her.  
No, maybe it was worthless to begin with.

He had been so troubled but maybe it was the opposite way around. Parents can’t choose their children. If his mother never had to take care of him maybe she would never have lost their mind. If Junko had a childhood friend in Kumagawa rather than him maybe she would have given up on destroying the academy far earlier.  
  
There was no point for him at all in this story, there was no role for him to play, so why did it hurt so damn much?  
  
Overwhlemed by pain, Junko’s affection for him was too heavy. He was already fragile and he felt the breaking point. He moved forward slowly as if the red string wrapped around his wrist was pulling him forward and controlling his actions.  
  
Then, he grabbed onto the side of Junko’s head as if caressing her cheek, allowing himself to touch her softly for the first time in so long, then he slammed her head hard against the side of the wall hard enough to knock her out. He did it without any hesitation at all as if the entire thing was pre-planned.  
  
Perhaps what he was doing right now was just another part f her plans, but Yasuke found himself not caring as he grabbed her by the hair and began to drag her along the floor.

At the time Yasuke had no idea how Kumagawa reacted once he found the empty room with pink blood stains on the wall, trailing obviously on the floor. However, he assumed that like the hero he was Kumagawa without any hesitation at all followed the trail to the elevator and then the roof.  
  
Kumagawa’s initial point of trauma. Watching Junko fall away from him, and trying to grab after her only to have her fail to take his hand. If he had just been strong in that moment, he would not have been hurt. If only he had been strong at the time, he could have overcome. Yasuke and Kumagawa were both plagued with regrets like that thinking about them over and over.

Of course just like the foolish hero he was without a single moment of hesitation he came running into Yasuke’s trap. The caged bars of the serviec elevator cleared and he came rushing forward 『Junko don’t hurt Yasuke-chan… oh wait. Yasuke...chan?』  
  
Kumagawa gave his head a surprised tilt. Yasuke was standing there on the edge of the roof holding up Junko by the neck. There were several wires tied around her like strings. The moment Kumagawa took a single step, Yasuke let go of her letting her drop offf.

Kumagawa’s eyes seemed to have all color drain out of them. Pure. Pure intent to kill came towards Yasuke. There was no hesitation nor humanity in his actions. He rushed forward as if all of his strings had been severed at once. He looked like once he was finished with Yasuke he would go on to kill everybody in sight. Yasuke however, sidestepped Kumagawa’s charge, grabbed him by the back of the neck, stepped on his foot to stop him from moving forward and then turned all his momentum to slam him hard into the concrete.  
  
“Don’t get so worked up devil boy.” Yasuke said in a voice lacking any kind of emotion. “You’re looking lively, did something good happen?”

『Sh… shut up! You killed… Junko… you were supposed to protect… You’ll pay!』  
  
“What? No way man, three’s no way she’s dead just from that.” He bent Kumagwaa’s head just enough to let him see. Junko was still danlging there, hanging by a red thread wrapped around her wrist. “There’s no way punishment would end that early. Now, now, it’s punishment time.”  
  
He bent back Kumagawa’s body in a way that made it almost impossible for him to move, and then twisted his arm forward and spread his fingers out on the ground in front of him. “It was so nice of you to come save her, so noble. I really do have such a great senpai.”

『Yasuke-chan. Are you going to kill me to punish Junko?』  
  
“Don’t jump to conclusions, idiot. Junko needs you to fix her. There’s no way I could get rid of you that easily. Besides, I’m the first person you met when you transferred into this school right? You want to become friends? Do you think I’m that much of a bastard that I’d kill you.”

Yasuke moved one of Kumagawa’s fingers right into position.  
  
“But, being a doctor I know exactly how much punishment the human body can take without dying. Now, tell me what happened to my mother, Junko.”  
  
『You know she’s not going to tell you Yasuke-chan. She’s probably thinking something stupid like ‘Those kinds of twists are best left ambiguous.’』  
  
“I see.” Matsuda without hesitation, broke on of Kumagawa’s fingers. If the thread holding onto her snapped, Kumagawa would not be able to save her with such a broken hand.  “Lying is no good.”

『Yasuke-chan, stop! Listen, you have a tendency to go manic just like me and Komaeda do. Your mother was already predisposed to some kind of illness, and you’ve acquired a lot of trauma that makes it harder for you to control yourself.』  
  
“Moving onto metacarpals.”  
  
Another finger broke. Kumagawa heard the snap, but only feared the snapping of the string in front of him. 

『Yasuke-chan why do you want to know so badly! What is it going to change?』  
  
“I have to determine whose fault it is. That way they can take the punishment for taking something precious from me.”

『Yasuke-chan it’s okay to lose! You’re still alive aren’t you? You can still keep living, keep smiling, even after losing things like parents, friends, and even love.』  
  
“Carpals.”  
  
Another broken bone.   
  
“Who’s fault is that? Do you really think you did a good thing? You let me keep living? You forgave me? Do you know how I felt? After I did this horrible thing and not a single person seemed to give a dann. You all just coddled me even though I knew I was a damn psycho who murdered people just because he liked one girl. I just wanted one person to reprimand me, to tell me I did the wrong thing, so I didn’t have to live in constant fear of how horrible I was, and how I could just so easily snap into doing those horrible things again.?”

『Then what do you want?』  
  
“Punishment. Somebody needs to be punished. Do you know how suffocating it was, being around all those happy people, who forgave me for how terrible I was, who even liked me? I just wanted them all to start hating me! I didn’t want them to overlook my crimes, I didn’t want to be coddled like a goddamn child! I wanted just one person to hate me as much as I hated myself. To realize the gravity of what I’d done. I don’t care if you undid the people I killed, I still feel like a murderer.”

『Yasuke-chan, please… I’m begging you stop, it’s your win. I’ll do what you want.』As Kumagawa said that, tears began to form in the corner of his eyes.  
  
“I know you’re much stronger than me Kumagawa, you could easily stop me if you wanted to. Come on, the girl you love will die if you’re not strong enough. Unless, you’re like me and the power of love is worthless to you.”

『Yasuke-chan, I promised Ryoko-chan. I can’t hurt you.』  
  
  
“Is that so? Distal radius.”

『Aaaaaaaaaah!』  
  
Another bone snapped.   
  
“Ulna.”

Then, another.   
  
“Radius.”  
  
Then, another.  
  
“I know she’s not going to tell me no matter how many bones I break of yours. Because you don’t mean anything to her, just like I don’t. If only she were never born. We’d be able to avoid so many of the atrocities in this world.”

『Is that what you think? Is that really what you goddamn think? Then tell me, if you were able to trade places with Zenkichi-chan and have a happy childhood friend, one who spoiled you and treated you like you were the most important person in the earth would you?』  
  
“...Huh?”  
  
『If Junko’s so unimportant to you! If there’s no feelings between you at all! Why are you throwing such a goddamn fit over it! Can you really say you regret even meeting her? That you wish she had never been born in the first place? If you weren’t happy for a single moment with her then why are you so miserable right now? Come on say it, say you could trade Junko for Medaka-chan. If you believe all that crap you’re spouting about how we’re all players on a stage or whatever!』

“I… I….”  
  
What was he doing?  
Manic?  
Oh, that was right the least time he let these emotions take over him he had slipped his hands around Kumagawa’s neck and twisted it nto a shape he did not recognize. He did not even realize what he was doing, all he thought was that he had to do it for Junko.  
  
For Junko…?  
This was… for Junko?  
He was hurting her.  
Well, that was probably what Junko wanted to.

As Matsuda tried to bring himself to answer that question, he noticed one more wire snapped.  He turned his head around slowly and saw that from the distance, a silhouette had shot and perfectly snapped the critical wire holding Junko up. Until then she had been dangling there like a maiden in distress, like a princess sitting on top of the tower.  
  
She was going to die.  
No, he didn’t…  
He just wanted her to tell him about his mother.  
He wanted Kumagawa to see him as the awful person he was.  
Why…?  
Why did things always turn out like this?  
Why could he not protect a goddamn thing?  
_Oh that’s right it’s because I’m not a hero._

At that moment Kumagawa threw Yasuke off of him effortlessly. He jumped off the side of the building without hesitation and grabbed onto the wire as it snapped apart, stopping it with his own hand. The hand that Yasuke had just broken bone by bone. Like a man who did not seem to feel pain at all he forced his broken fingers to move.

『Junko, hold on tightly.』  
  
Kumagawa said, not a trace of emotion in his voice at all. He sounded calm like unmoving water. The ire whipped him around back and forth as the two of them bgan to plummet wildly, but even as the wire wrapped around his arm like a snake and twisted it back on itself.  
  
“Hurts doesn’t it… Haha, after all I know full well love is pain. Hey, Kumagawa just let go. You’re no hero, and neither am I. Besides, even if we tried to save her the princess is a liar. If you keep going you’ll destroy your entire arm like that.” Yasuke called out watching from the side of the roof.

『So what?』  
  
“There’s no real reason for you to feel obligated to save her. There’s no such thing as important people.  My mother once treated me the same, she forgot about me, and so did Junko I was just a pawn to her.”

『She built that entire damn sandcastle for you, you idiot! She wanted you to see it! She wanted you to come play with her.』  
  
“Sandcastle… I…” Yasuke’s eyes went cross as he stared unevenly into the past. “Yeah, she worked on that thing for three weeks didn’t she? She went so far to save me, to give me a reason to leave that house. But… it became all rotten. Losing Junko I lost my reason for living.”  
  
“Misogi…”  
  
Junko finally spoke up, as Kumagawa’s pink blood splashed across her face.  
  
Yasuke’s eyes focused again. “Oh, his skin is starting to tear, and I can see his muscle tendons now… Oh his bone is jutting out. Is this kind of bloodshed the thing you like, Junko? I can’t see the appeal, it’s all ugly and twisted up.”

『It’s fine. This. This. This. This. This doesn’t hurt at all.』  
  
“Maybe we should just fall together. If I decide to stop living to the next day you’ll die with me, right?”  
  
『You haven’t decided yet! Like hell I'll let anybody else decide for you, until you make up your mind.』

“I told you it was too heavy. It was way too heavy for you to bear. It’s going to tear you in half.”

『No it’s not. This time, this time, this time, this time.』  
  
“Yasuke-kun!” Junko finally called out. “Do you want me to take the punishment alone? Will that make you happy?”

“...Yeah.”  
  
At this, Enoshima Junko smiled. Despite her situation she smiled as serene as an angel. “Then, I’ll make you miserable, I'll take it together with Misogi.”  
  
She finally moved on her own in spite of the strings. She did not see a single thing from her perspective but Kumagawa's hand reaching towards her. It was like the rest of the world did not exist. Unlike the last time that she refused to take it, now greedily, she took it for herself, she climbed onto him wrapping herself around him.  
  
At that moment Kumagawa’s bones began to snap. His arm would not support both of their weights together much longer. The last string broke, what was supporting them collapsed. They were falling, falling.

And then Kumagawa heard a voice.  
  
“You damn kids somebody is going to have to pay the hotel for damages.”  
  
Just like a cat, somebody had grabbed him by his collar and snatched him back up. He was dragged to the rooftop and thrown there. Junko a moment later was thrown next to him. He looked at his twisted and bent up arm.  
  
Kaiki threw a ball of red string at him. It bounced off his head and unspooled on the floor.“I say you can’t play cat’s cradle with a broken finger, so you broke your entire arm out of spite. Children are so stubborn.”

Kumagawa sat up against the wall, looking at his twisted up arm. It had basically been shredded to pieces by the wire. Even the sleeve of his sweater had been torn up. Junko Love had been stained by his pink blood. Next to him, Enoshima Junko had laid her head on his lap looking like a princess who had fallen asleep. Her golden hair fell all around him in every direction as blood started to pool at his side. Yet, surprisingly she seemed untouched by it. Entirely undisturbed. An ephemeral beauty that did not exist on this plane of reality... no that was just a lie. She was not some beautiful, untouchable princess that was just the lie he had bought into.  
  
Yasuke looked on the brink of tears. He bit his tongue down hard just to stop himself from crying. “Junko I… I just wanted to live for you. So why… why did you have to kill me?”  
  
The question he had wanted to ask for so long. He just wanted to hear the answer from her lips, even if it was a rejection he could take it. Yet she ignored him, yet he had nobody to talk to or deal with these feelings with. So, he just let them stew over and over again, until he lost sight of reality of morality, of himself again.  
  
“You can’t.” Junko opened her one red eye to look at him. “You know Yasuke-kun, I’m so damn sick of everything.Of living, of the people around me, the people not around me, all of the various intentions that make up this world, and all of the ones that don’t, of you, and of course myself. It’s all just a damned headache. I’m the one who’s disgusted her. Living is only tedious. But death doesn’t provide anything interesting either, it’s like I don’t give a damn either way. The truth is I probably don’t even remember what happened to your mother, I don’t give a damn about that either. But, if you were able to kill me… kill me entirely for yourself...could you do that?”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I wonder what went wrong.” She said casually, as she intertwined her finger’s with Kumagawa’s. She stretched against him like she was some cat, like neither of their lives had been threatened a moment ago. “When did people stop being able t do things for themselves, Yasuke-kun? You can’t live for me no matter what from now on, so you have to live for yourself. Doesn’t it just make you want to fall into despair?”  
  
That was Junko speaking honestly. There was nothing special about it, she just sounded like a tired, spoiled princess. Like nothing mattered at all to her. Like she was over all of it. The true self he had wanted to see so desperately, that he had made out to be some kind of special being. Just an ugly, empty, girl as he was always saying. “So I was right. The only thing you care about these days is Kumagawa…”

Before he could do anything about it, Kaiki spoke up again. “So what, Matsuda? Have you become worthless now that Junko dumped you? Was that the only thing you ever wanted to become? Is that all your life ever meant to you.”  
  
Yasuke turned around and violently grabbed Kaiki by the side of his face slamming him into the wall. His body was thin and crooked like a dead tree, he pretty much weighed nothing at all. Inflicting pain on him was as easy as inflicting it on Kumagawa.  
  
“You know what, Mastuda. That idiot Kumagawa is volunteering to do something as sluggish as dating Enoshima for you. So you can put an end to that sluggish thing and do some other sluggish thing. You have all sorts of others things you want to try, right? Am I wrong?”  
  
“Something I want to try? Something I want to do? For myself? Was there…Why did I become a neurologist in the first place was it entirely for her?”  
  
“Come on, Matsuda. For you, was everything in this world outside of Enoshima so worthless that you didn’t care at all? Your classmates...you didn’t love those regular law abiding kids at all? In your priorities list, was everything other than Enoshima all trash? Are you really as boorish as that girl, as that princess who holds her nose up at the entire world?”  
  
“They… they weren’t…”  
  
“Then why is it? Why is Enoshima the only one to get special treatment? Is she your alter ego or something?”  
  
“What would you know, Kaiki? You don’t know a damn thing about me! You don’t know anything about my situation.”  
  
“That’s right I don’t know a thing. I don’t know anything about your thoughts and feelings. Neither does Enoshima though. The only person that can take care of you is you. The only one who can decide to keep living is you.”  
  
“Am I really allowed to give up that easily…? Don’t I… Don’t I need to be punished? Shouldn’t I be held back by the past?”  
  
“You can. Because you’re human. A foolish boy I know. I foolish boy I know always treats his current love like it’s his first. He always looks like he’s never fallen in love with someone before that. He falls in love so easily, and then falls out of it just as easy. And that’s the right way to go. That’s how it should be."

Kaiki's eyes traveled to Kumagawa as he reached forward and combed his fingers gently through Junko's hair. He put her headache before his own twisted up hand. As she grumbled, complained, and wobbled back and forth he took it all with a smile. He leaned forward and whispered back into her ear, and buried her face in him and snickered against him. As if he had never been troubled before. Carefree. A completely idiotic expression. Living his life like a fool still. It was envious.   
  
"There is no such thing as a special person, there’s no one who’s going to be irreplaceable to you. Before this you were trying to live on your own weren’t you? You were trying to live alone and deal with the day to day punishments of living why not just go back to that? You were doing so well until you snapped. You don’t need to have a dramatic scene like this. Just go back to being annoyed at Kumagawa and Enoshima, go back to being bitter and mouthing off, feeling dissatisfied. If that’s how you chose to live from now on then why don’t you keep following that choice. Who cares if you're irreparably broken? You've been living that way up until this point so can't you keep living your boring, broken, empty life? ”  
  
“I… I…. I didn’t want to live for Junko. I wanted to live, didn’t I? Unlike my mother who died, unlike Junko who was always on the brink of death, I wanted to live.”  
  
As he realized that, Matsuda collapsed. He would have fallen, if at last minute Kumagawa did not reach out for him with his sole remaining good hand and pull him towards the pile of children that was accumulating on him. Junko on his left side, and Matsuda on his right. Kumagawa’s embrace was all that held them together.  
  
“Don’t try living for love, Matsuda. It’s an unbelievably cheap thing. Romance isn’t everything that’s fun in life. Don’t throw your future away. Everyone has embarrassing adolescents… Have I said enough responsible adult things yet?” Kaiki said as he turned his back to the trio. “Do you get it yet Matsuda? There’s nothing you can do for Junko. When you’re around her, you’re just useless. Romance can strengthen people, but it’s also able to make things useless. Because she was with him, Kumagawa was able to strengthen himself a little bit but it’s just made you useless. Kumaawa was useless when he was living only for Ajimu-san, Junko came in and strengthened him. So this time, he was the right guy for the situation. That's all it was, it just happened to work out that way. There's nothing special about it.   
  
“Love is cheap…?”  
  
Yasuke's eyes lowered to the unraveled red string, the string used to play cat's cradle that had become soaked in Kumagawa's pink blood.   
  
“You can buy it at the store for a few hundred yen.”  
  
"Kaiki, do you think I can become happy? Even without Junko?"  
  
"Who knows? You seemed to be enjoying yourself recklessly up till moments ago...I'm sure that girl enjoyed herself a lot and made herself happy off the misery of others in the past too. But then becoming happy isn't the primary objective why humans live. Humans don't live for any reason at all."   
  
After that, Kaiki put his hands in his pockets and wandered off. Like he was so exhausted by the scene he could not even bother to watch it's conclusion.   
  
『Awe, don’t worry about him he’s just grumpy…!』

Kumagawa said in a pleasant voice barely reacting to the mood as usual.  
  
“Kumagawa… what… what did I do?”  
  
Yasuke looked to see the pool of pink that was gathering at both of their feet. How much pain Kumagawa had been in, had not even occurred to him at this point. He had been thinking like he was the only one in the whole world who felt pain.  
  
Yasuke’s eyes traveled as he saw the blood soaked thread that Kaiki left behin, and then Kumagawa’s face looking at him as always. Junko resting against the other side of Kumagawa, closing her eyes as if to fall asleep. Perhaps she was just tired of this situation, or perhaps she thought it had nothing to do with her. Even after all of that Kumagawa still embraced him, no matter how much pain he was in he thought about the pain of another person first.

『It’s fine Yasuke-chan. I received the punishment. Now we can all get along again!』


	17. Saving the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ihiko in the final arc of Medaka Box is like. A giant troll man with horns. Who is like some kind of mad spartan warrior and a commetary on how the greek views of heroes is radically different from the one today. And I didn't think that gelled really well with the Dangan Ronpa setting so instead I kind of combined him with Emonzaemon Souda, a character from Katanagatari another NIsioIsin work. The fight scene with Komaeda is just a reference to Niwa Penguin fight because it's hilarious that Niwa Penguin and Komaeda have the same powers. I thought Emonzaemon still had that kind of ancient warrior and unbelievable strength that Ihiko represented, also I like him better than Ihiko so I made the swap, he's still meant to represent a "character that's stronger than both Medaka, Ajimu and Kamukura."
> 
> Also from here on out I really wanted to include Ougi, but also needed to write Pre!Game Shuichi to set up for V3 so I decided to combine them into the same character for maximum creepy goth.

No matter how many times you tell it, a lie will never become the truth.  
No matter how hard it tries, a fake cannot become the real thing.  
That was the oppressive reality Shiranui Hansode lived.  
  
This is not just the story of the World Destroyer Enoshima Junko, but the World Destroyers plural. I say this with utter delight that the world does not actually revolve around Enoshima Junko after all.  
  
So briefly let’s catch up with the rest of the world. Rather frustratingly, no matter how overwhelming it is, no matter how much you wish it to stop, the world continues to spin. That morning before going to school like she usually did, or rather skipping class like she usually did Shiranui was found and summoned to the principal’s office.  
  
Kirigiri Jin folded his hand. A stern and remote look on his face. “Shiranui, we have troubling news about your hometown.”  
  
Tatami mats were stained pink with blood, folding doors had been thrown onto the floor. So much so it looked like somebody was trying to repaint the entire place.  
  
“I think five swords is good right? Disagreements, defeat, winning at all costs. Oi, oi, oi, what do you think? Tell me what you think so I can pick the opposite just to be contradictory.”  
  
“I have no thoughts outside of what would entertain you best, princess.”  
  
“God, what a boring response! You know just because we used science to rewrite your personality doesn’t mean you have an excuse for having no personality at all!”  
  
“I think that would serve as an excuse.”  
  
“What’s all this? Don’t tell me, you’re disagreeing with me? Hang on, what will you do if you hurt my feelings?”

“Whatever you want me to do, princess.”  
  
The trail of pink blood led all the way to a central room. Old fashioned robes, textiles, string and other various cloth was thrown about the floor. It made sense that the central room of command in a village full of liars who were experts at dressing themselves up would be so much like a backstage dressing room.  
  
Dancing around in the backstage once her slaughter was complete was none other than Enoshima Junko.  
  
“I’m glad we made it back here in time from Towa City, but boy are my arms tired from the swim.”  
  
“Unhumorous.”  
  
“That’s the joke that it’s supposed to be unfunny! It’s an intentional irony and you’re totally issing the genius of my humor! Laugh, laugh, but laugh with me not at me! Except when I want you to laugh at me, obviously. Laugh, laugh, keep on laughing through life, oh but only when I say so don’t laugh at me when I don’t want it I’m secretly a sensitive girl underneath these many layers of irony after all.”  
  
However, of course without some kind of supernatural explanation Enoshima Junko could not be in two places at once. This is obviously a fake Enoshima who has been sitting in the background of the story for quite some time. I would almost commend her for being so patient and waiting her turn, as Enoshima’s so naturally tend to be attracted to the spotlight, if I were to put it kindly. As her childhood best friend if I were to put it unkindly I would say they’re attention hungry bitches.  
  
At that moment she danced around, blonde hair, black heels with red lances, and a custom black and red schol uniform, a bunny on one side of her pig tails and a red and white bow on the other side. Her spotted tie moved with her flowing around her as she danced around. A fake Junko, Nisenoshima.

  
At the moment she was trying to decide on what symbolism would be the best for her. She ripped one of the swords out of the old woman’s body, who would have been introduced as Obi if she had lived long enough to be introduced. “How about four swords is that better. Relaxation, rest, Meditation… Hmmm, actually.”    
  
“No matter how many swords you put in her, princess she’ll still be dead.”  
  
“What if we get five more! Ten of swords! Ugh, but then we’ll have to move the body.” The body had fallen face down in a desk that was piled high up with scrolls and correspondences. They were all worthless now as they had been drowned out in pink ink. “I don’t want to touch some old women’s body, what if wrinkles are infectious? What if I get all gross and wrinkly just by touching them! I don’t want to catch icky old old ness!”

“Ah, I can move the body for you if you want.”

“But, then you’re the one who would get icky, though you’re plenty icky already. You’re always showing me such annoying faces.” She stabbed two more swords back in. “Six of swords is the best. I shouldn’t have tried to put my own spin on things.”  
  
“Put your own… princess, did you turn the slaughter of this village into a manga reference?”  
  
“Whaaaaat? Reference manga? I would never do that. This is all one hundred percent my own work! This is my original debut as an author!”  
  
“If it’s your own original work then why are you dressed up as someone else?”  
  
“Waaaaaah! What kind of gilgamesh level condescension are you showing me? Do you hate me? Haven’t you come to detest me? God, rewrite somebody’s entire personality with technology in horrific experiments and then suddenly they think they’re justified in getting all lippy.”  
  
“I don’t hate you, princess.”  
  
“Awe boo, you’re no fun. Hey, it’s okay! If you hate me enough, you’ll want to kill me. If you come to hate me, then it’ll become all the more despair-inducing… and that’ll make this story all the more thrilling.”

She jumped up on the corner of the desk and crossed her legs. She turned the camera towards herself, and then posed with the dead body. Displeased for a moment Nisenoshima hurriedly gestured for the other who was with her to join her. Awkwardly, he tried to squeeze himself into the frame. He was long, with wide shoulders but a thin waste, he had orange hair drawn back into a pony tail and his face was covered with a half mask.

“Victory selfie!” Nisenoshima shouted, before snapping the picture.

Not only were the comedic one and the straight man present, but there were fourteen others standing at attention to her. One of them stopped playing with her knife to look back at their leader. “You sure you’re fine with killing her? She raised you like a daughter didn’t she?”  
  
“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s not like any of us are actually related by blood. This place just happens to be the island of misfit toys.” Nisenoshima dropped her phone and then kicked her legs playfully for a moment before jumping off the desk. “I’ve changed my face so many times she probably doesn’t even remember what I look like anymore. Now then, enough goofing around all of you!”  
  
She was undercut by the man in the half mask. “You were the only one playing around.”  
  
“I said enough! I wasn’t the only one, Ruki-ruki-chan over there went and attacked my dear stupid sister ahead of schedule. That girl Ikusaba is such an empty headed clutz what would you have done if she slipped on banana peel and like accidentally cut her face off or something.”  
  
“I dunno. Laugh?” Cae an emotionless reply.  
  
“No, no I’m the only one allowed to laugh, me! It’s the author who gets the last laugh, you guys are all characters so go back to your glum lives overcoming obstacles, and struggling with flaws and whatever. No matter how much you toil though your struggle is to the benefit of the author.”  
  
“Hmm, Princess. You’re getting into the meta stuff too early, this scene is going to drag.”  
  
“Right, right, now then… Today’s the last day I play ‘ordinary boring student’ under an alias. I’m sorry but your daily school life adventures, and your long drawn out character building conversations are coming to an end. There’s a thing called a plot we have to get to. You’ll excuse me if I want to have one last laugh. Ihiko (the Dark secret of the Kurokamis) and Ultimate Despairs (Fallen Ultimate Talents), are in the (my) true Enoshima Junko-chan’s hands! Now all we need is Kamukura-senpai to come join us.”  
  
“Is he really necessary?” The man in the half mask asked.  
  
“Awe are you jealous? Will you lose your role as straight man if I’m suddenly surrounded by two stoic hunky dudes?”  
  
“Hunky…”  
  
“Anyway, it’s not a perfect recreation if you don’t have all the pieces on the board! Why don’t we just show up to an anime convention with a cardboard box around our chest and ‘Gundham’ written on the front in sharpie marker and try to pass our laziness off as irony.”  
  
“Weren’t you trying to do that earlier?”  
  
“God! The joke has changed since then! Keep up already! Everything’s going to be set back the way it was, the way it’s supposed to be, as Enoshima’s successor I’m going to make sure of that.” After her fit of hyperactivity, suddenly a sad wistful look overcame the girl as she looked out the window somewhere far off into the distance. “Still, poor Hansode-chan. This was supposed to be an adaptation of her arc you know? Revealing the mystery of the Shiranui village! But then we went and killed them all before she got any time to shine. Whoops, I’m such a clutz, upupupupupupupupupu!”

Laughing at her own joke, ensuring she had the last laugh, the author of this entire scenario closed the page on the scene.

 

😈

Naegi Makoto raised his head from a desk and saw himself in an unfamiliar classroom. When he looked to the door he saw that he was trapped.

Don’t worry it’s not what you think. An annoying bear mascot isn’t going to come out of nowhere and start making bad jokes. No, the only one who has the power to make bad jokes now is me, the narrator.

Makoto had only fallen asleep because of the poor night’s sleep he got previously, he was not gassed or knocked out or anything. His hazy memories were only a result of his sleepy consciousness, as he woke up again he remembered he had gone back to the old school building with an underclassmen.

They had gone to investigate classroom 2-B in the old school building together on a request from Kirigiri Kyoko, however the moment they entered something strange occured. The entire classroom like it had been lifted from this reality and it had entered closed space, sealed itself off, and neither of them could escape. Makoto did his best to try to solve this strange situation for the sake of his underclassmen.  
  
Actually no he just got tired and took a nap. Now that he was refreshed though he was going to do his best. He walked to the door and grabbed it, pulling on it once more as Kanji characters traveled back and forth across the wall. However, no matter his struggle the door refused to move.  
  
“It’s no good, Naegi-senpai.”  
  
Saihara Shuichi called out from the other side of the room. After becoming a student at Hope’s Peak he had switched to a more traditional uniform, no pin stripes just a black suit with a striped tie, and a black hat with three stripes on the side. He grabbed his hat and fidgeted with it for a moment pulling it over one eye. “Oh, that just now… I didn’t mean that you’re no good at all okay? I’ve tried lots of things, but neither the big windows, or the upper ones will budge one bit.”

They were trapped a classroom in the old school building, but it was not bear season so they were probably not going to be forced to kill each other any time soon. No, they were just mildly inconvenienced. I’m the kind of guy that just goes “please just kill me already” at every small obstacle at this point in life though since I’m so done with it, so I can understand their suffering.  
  
Saihara had been following Kirigiri around as an assistant all last year, but now he was an official student of the seventy ninth class of Hope’s Peak. Not only that but Makoto had somehow miraculously made it to his second year without the world ending, so he wanted to be a proper upperclassman.  
  
He scratched at the back of his head. “No… a misunderstanding where I think I’m no good? It’s fine I’m not the kind of guy who makes every situation about himself.” Shuichi tended to be sensitive, so sensitive even the feminine and sensitive Makoto who had been dubbed a ‘heroine’ in the past was outclassed. He was constantly speaking, and then taking back almost everything he said for fear of hurting others.  
  
Or perhaps hurting others wasn’t his true fear but rather their eyes. The hateful glares others make, when you say something distasteful, when you say a truth they don’t agree with, Shuichi could not stand at all that kind of retaliation.  
  
“It doesn’t seem like it’s locked or barricaded, but rather that they’re being held into place. Then there’s the weird red kanji that’s spinning on the wall. It’s probably another supernatural thing…” Ever since the ‘Sandbox Kids’ as they were collectively termed had transferred into their school last year, several supernatural incidents had intruded on Makoto’s life.  
  
“Well, Mukuro knows that we’re in here. It’s probably better to wait for her to find us on the other side. She can probably just blow up the door or something… sounds like something she’d do.”  
  
“What kind of image do you have of your girlfriend exactly…?” Shuichi muttered nervously behind him. Then, sitting at the teacher’s podium he straightened up and leaned against it. “You’re relying on someone else to help you, Naegi-senpai? All people can save themselves on their own.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Excuse me. That’s just something I heard once from Ikusaba-senpai, who in turn heard it from Kumagawa-senpai, who I think heard it from my uncle. It has nothing to do with me or with you, Naegi-senpai. But in any case, it’s not a bad thing to rely on one’s comrades, but fundamentally, I don’t think we should give up trying to escape on our own strength… because…”

He pointed to the clock above them.  
The hands on the clock from the moment they entered the classroom. They had not moved a single minute, not even a second.  
  
“Besides, we’re here because your precious friend Kirigiri-senpai asked us to investigate this room for her while she was away, right?”  
  
“I was wondering about that. Didn’t you leave with her, Saihara-kun? Aren’t you her sidekick?”  
  
“No, no, no, no, you’re fundamentally misunderstanding the watson type roll. Kirigiri-senpai is the special one, she’s the chosen one, a main character. There’s nobody in the world that could replace her for any given role she’s in. But you know the Watson’s role is just to be an ordinary person who asks dumb questions that the rest of the audience would ask. Anybody, anywhere, could play it at any time. So there’s no special need for me to be by her side, it could be anyone.”  
  
“Saihara-kun, I’m sure she doesn’t think that way.”  
  
“But do you?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Nothing, nevermind. The clock probably did not stop for missing batteries, or anything convenient like that. Maybe this room is a secret room like the kind that appears in mystery novels.”  
  
“I wouldn’t put it past Enoshima. She basically renovated this entire old school building into a death trap anyway. It’s dangerous for someone like you to be in here Saihara-kun.”  
  
“Oh, but what about you Naegi-senpai? Well, I guess you usually avoid this building but the moment Kirigiri-senpai asked you too you stopped thinking about the danger like a switch in your head got flipped. Ah, wait, don’t look at me like that I’ll apologize really!”  
  
“I’m not glaring at you. It’s okay Saihara-kun.” Makoto had simply been trying to survey the room. In fact he did not notice much of what the other boy was saying, he had a nervous habit of speaking too quickly, and muttering in between patchy breaths.  
  
“No, no, no, I’m sure with an unreliable underclassmen before you so, your nerves must be strained. Perhaps there’s something about this room in particular, like a mystery to be solved. If we clear it we’ll clear the conditions for exiting this room.”  
  
“You and Kiri both like the detective novels, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah I know. Real life isn’t anything like novels, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking detective novels. In mystery stories, there’s always one clear truth, one clear solution that everyone is working towards…” Shuichi quickly brought his sleeve forward to cover his mouth. “Unless the author wants to get all subversive or something.”  
  
“Well, I don’t mind following your plan. We should try our best to figure out what’s so special about this room anyway that Kiri asked us to investigate it.” Despite taking a nap earlier, Makoto found that he was still tired. Something was sleepy about the atmosphere around him almost as if he could sleep into a dream at any moment. He stretched and walked back to one of the desks sitting down.  
  
“You sat in the same desk twice. Is something familiar about that seat?” Shuichi asked.  
  
“Yeah, now that I think about it this was our old classroom last year.”  
  
One year ago, this was before the old school building was closed for renovations. When he thought he was nothing more than a happy go lucky student, who lucked his way big time into getting into a school for celebrities. When he was nobody in particular, and had nothing in particular to do with the main story.  
  
Suddenly, as he was sitting there he looked and saw the legs of his chair, and his desk quickly sinking into the floor as if it the floor itself was melting into liquid. Not only his desk but soon his feet were pulled underneath the floor. He backed away from the chair and struggled against it but it was like quicksand the more he struggled the more he was pulled under.  
  
As his face disappeared, he desperately gasped for one last breath. Even when pulled under the surface of the water there was still light. Light came from above, frm the surface of the water, but smehow it was different the light became inverted, fractured. As he looked around himself he could see several chairs, and desks sinking into depths of the water with him towards their gradual burial at sea.  
  
There was only one tie in his life when he had seen so many desks thrown about. Just at the brink of the riots when the reserve course was storming the main campus suddenly violence began to break out. They picked up desks and chairs using them as weapons, or wildly throwing them out of windows. Makoto had watched from above, desks, chairs, and pieces of glass rain down just like this.  
  
Suddenly remembering something else he looked around. Not only were there lost desks, the surface of the water rippled and broken once more. Pouring down from above a few students fell in with him. The plummeted down, down. Makoto remembered watching as he ran to safety. Ultimate Talents, Celebrities online, his upperclassmen that he had looked up to, the violent mob turned on them and he began to see their bodies thrown about. Some of them were beaten, some of them fought back, and sme of them were tossed helplessly out of windows just like they were furniture. Sinking further and further, and this time Makoto was sinking with them.  
  
Scarier tha looking at the bodies, or looking at the signs of the broken hope’s peak that had fallen into the water however, was when Makoto’s body began to turn and as he swum downwards he saw a pitch black shadow waiting for him at the bottom.  Immediately his whole body seized and he woke up once more. Looking around he saw he was in the exact same classroom, the windows and doors were both sealed off by circling red kanji.

“Sorry, did I say something wrong? You look upset Naegi-senpai? Did I fail to pick up a hint or something? Hey, hey, if this is your old classroom perhaps the secret to why we’re trapped in here lies with you. Did you ever stay after class?”  
  
“I didn’t… well, there was one time. Saihara-kun do you know anything? Did Kirigiri-senpai tell you anything?”  
  
“I don’t know anything, really. I’m a failure of a detective whose afraid of the truth. You’re the one that knows, Naegi-senpai.”

Shuichi said as he sitting from the desk behind Makoto, crawled over the top of the desk came so close to him just to lean over his shoulder that it was like he was whispering intimately in the other boy’s ear. That was probably just a result of his poor social skills though and lack of knowledge of personal space.

Howeer because he was looking over his shoulder at that precise moment he saw Makoto pulling out a picture that was hidden in his desk. Makoto turned his head around and explained the story behind that photograph. It was a photograph of the entire 78th class, that had everyone but him in it.  
  
He still remembered the day crystal clear. He always considered himself somebody who could get along with almost anybody, not that he was a popular or well liked guy. There were however two girls in the class that he never really seemed to get the chance to talk to. Ikusaba Mukuro always sat in the back of the class staring out the window. At first he thought she had kind of a scary sounding talent, ultimate soldier, he had almost expected her to look as ripped as Sakura. Instead of being tough or overly forceful though she was just a quiet girl, distancing herself from everything and everyone. Junko was the opposite, she was always getting involved with people in the class she always seemed to be the center of attention and she even talked to Makoto several times. She had a thoughtless way of talking, and sometimes she would insult him by accident but never in a way he could not laugh off. Yet at the same time Makoto had a strong sense of what it was like to have friends, he had made plenty of friends in primary school and middle school yet he could not call himself friends with Enoshima at all. Both girls seemed distant to him in opposite ways.  
  
Then on that day everybody had been arguing over who was going to take the class photo. The person who took it was not going to be in the photo. Makoto watched the arguments from the side. He also wanted to be in the photo but more than his own desire, he suddenly began to feel the tension in the air around him, he felt how upset everyone was getting like it was his own emotions. This was the first time they came together as a class he did not want the moment to be ruined. If him getting excluded meant everybody else could get along, even if he did not get exactly what he wanted he thought right away that was the best route. At least it was the only way to cure the sickness in his stomach.

“It’s okay guys, I’ll take it!”  
  
“Yeah you’re right, Makoto should sit out. Being next to somebody so bright and cheerful gives me the creeps," Fukawa said.   
  
“I don’t want his cheap uniform polluting the air next to my expensive suit," Togami agreed.   
  
“You guys could have given me a little resistance at least…” Makoto whined, but he was more making a show of grumbling rather than actually being bothered. As he walked over to set up the camera suddenly out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl sitting in the last seat of the back row stand up.  
  
“I… I want to be in the picture too…”  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro said, in a voice so quiet it was like a songbird’s whisper. Before that point in his life, Makoto was sure he had talked with Mukuro at least a few times or at least he tried to but he did not expect such a girl to have such a gentle sounding voice. No, he wondered if a voice had ever sounded so delicate, so soft to him before.  
  
Looking at the floor the girl made her way up to the front. She stared at the group for a moment and even looked like she might try to go for the center, before she became too timid and instead went directly behind Sayaka. Naegi wondered for a moment if Mukuro had caught him staring at Sayaka before this moment. If he had a choice he would have liked to stand next to her in the picture.  
  
Mukuro had pale skin and raven hair that only served to make her look paler. She was thin but not in the way most cute girls were, in fact she looked like she was hungry constantly. For a moment she weakly rose her fingers up, trying to copy the pose Sayaka was making. Then, she grew too timid and gave it up folding her hands behind her back. Makoto thought she might look away disinterested and that made him a little bit afraid. That girl who never participated in class was suddenly participating and he had no idea why.  
  
He smiled at her from across the room to encourage her. If he were more bold, he might have even called out her name and told her to smile. He was worried that might seem awkward though, or the others might call him some kind of playboy for singling out one girl in the class. He hoped, she would understand just from that smile the words he wanted to convey. _I’d love to see your smile too._

That girl had been looking away until just that moment. She caught his smile out of the corner of her eyes and turned her head back. Then, she leveled her gaze at him and looked directly at the camera. Her lips twitched for a moment. She tried awkwardly to smile, but then her face reset to its default expression.  
  
That day, even though he had been introduced to her sometime in the past and he was sure he had a few brief conversations with her, Makoto did not get the sense that he had seen any of the real Ikusaba Mukuro until that day. It left him with the thought. _I wonder what she would look like if she smiled for real._ He would be too embarrassed if he ever spoke it aloud though.

“What a happy memory. Do you think we’re being trapped here by your nostalgia for the past?”  
  
“It would be nice if that were the case but I doubt it."

“Hey, Naegi-senpai what’s your relationship with Kirigiri-senpai?” Even though Makoto did not mind Saihara’s closeness, Saihara had come to rest his chin on his shoulder. It was a bit odd. When he tried to look back, Saihara simply grabbed  his face and positioned his head forward. “She’s trusting you to figure out this secret, right? Kirigiri-senpai doesn’t trust anyone by nature, you must be someone special beyond a friend like a best friend.”  
  
“I only have one best in the whole world and that is Togami Byakuya!” Makoto said, suddenly straightening up and holding his shoulders with pride.  
  
“Somehow I don’t think Togami-senpai would agree.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Oh, nothing. Then if she’s not a best friend is she more than a best friend.”  
  
“Kiri and I are basically platonic soulmates.””  
  
“Somehow I feel bad for your girlfriend.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Oh, sorry it was just something stupid. So basically in your first year you were friends with Maizono-senpai from middle school and you really looked up to her, however because of your admiration f her you ended up being distant. The person you got close to was Kirigiri-senpai who nobody else in the class would even approach and who had a tendency to disappear for long periods of time to go investigating overseas. The two of you reached a not quite friends, not quite lovers stage in your relationship and then suddenly you started to get involved with Ikusaba-senpai and she confessed to you. That’s kind of a stange progression don’t you think?”  
  
“Umm… How do you know all that Saihara-kun.”  
  
“I don’t know anything, you’re the one who knows. You told me remember? It’s normal for boys to gossip about relationships and girlfriends when they’re alone together.”  
  
“Well, if you say so I guess it happened.”

“Are you aware of the term whirlwind romance?”  
  
“Whirlwind what now?”  
  
“It’s like the kind of romance where the wind sweeps you off your feet, and you lose control to love, like you don’t remember the exact circumstances in which you fell in love. That’s a common criticism of movies isn’t it? That a male and a female get dragged into circumstances together and just so happen to fall in love because of those circumstances.”

“Uh, sorry I’m not really one for the meta conversations. Maybe when Kumagawa-senpai gets back you can gossip with him instead, you know about girls, relationships, love, you know guy talk.” Awkwardly Makoto reached up to scratch at the back of his head again, the side of his face that Saihara was not currently pressing his face against.  
  
“There’s something unpleasant about this room you know. I keep hearing noises like it’s raining outside you know, drip, drip, drip, drip. Also, there’s footsteps in the hallway. This room smells slightly of ash. I can hear popping noises too… is somebody chewing gum or something? Well, I’m sure from all of those observations you can put it together. The curse that’s keeping us in this room.”  
  
“Saihara-kun you’re talking like you already have it figured out.”  
  
“No way, no way. I’m just a fake detective. I’m basically lower than your level. You know that trick that Kirigiri-senpai always pulls where she leads people to the conclusions she wants them to make I wouldn’t be smart enough to do that.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
Shuichi got closer somehow.  
Makoto could feel the boy’s wet breath on the back of his ear. For a moment the floor looked like black water again, sloshing back and forth. Then suddenly eyelids peeled open slowly from the water. Several pairs of eyes at once peered at them from the darkness of the water. They swirled around them, the water itself becoming incomprehensible black scribbles in between the eyeballs. As the eyes circled and circled around they all kept their gaze affixed on one thing.  
Shuichi and Makoto at the center of them. No matter where they went, the eyes were watching them. It was like saying there’s no escape at all.

Makoto wondered if this inky black sensation sloshing all around him was how Shuichi felt all the time. If that was the case a little awkward social behavior could be forgiven.  
  
“Then it might be an unpleasant memory associated with this room. Let’s just talk about it, Naegi-senpai. Naegi Makoto. You’ll feel at ease. No matter how horrible the memory, after it all comes out it becomes just a story.”  
  
“Story?”  
  
“I’ll listen to you. II understand how hard it can be to tell the truth. I know I don’t look like much, but I understand… once you tell everyone the truth… and see the look in their eyes… No matter what you say I’d never turn such a harsh gaze on you.”

“Oh I see, you’re trying to be kind. Thank you.” Makoto tried to see the best in what he was saying as usual.  
  
“We can’t get out?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“We can’t get out. Unless we kill each other.”  
  
At that moment Makoto relayed a completely different memory, one of different tone and genre, of which Ikusaba Mukuro happened to be the star of again.  
  
That girl with her mouth downturned in an unpleasant expression carrying a bag on her shoulder suddenly pulled the door open. She walked in ignoring the nervous glances of the student council. After she put her bag down on the teacher’s desk, one of the student council members finally spoke up.  
  
“You talk! I don’t know where you get off threatening us but it’s not going to work.”  
  
“Was that video real?”  
  
“This is not at all how we operate.”  
  
That girl shut out the various voices of the people around her, and ignored them all. Not even looking at them, her eyes affixed somewhere far off in the distance beyond them, she said the lines her sister had told her to say. “Student council members. In accordance with my sister’s will you will now murder each other.”  
  
“Huh? Are you crazy? Why the hell would we do something like that?” A girl sitting in the same desk that Makoto had been sitting in, in the past suddentls tood up. She had red hair and a fiery temper to her. However, it did not really matter what she looked like or who she was.  
  
“That’s enough! It’s essential that we all remain calm! Should we succumb to panic here!” Soushun Mursame held an arm in front of her as he tried t hold her back. His speech was cut off halfway through, that did not matter either. As he heard a popping noise, and a splash like water and reached up to see that there was something wet on his face.  
  
Without any hesitation at all, without even looking at her, that girl had been shot straight through the chest by Ikusaba Mukuro. She fell out of her chair and backwards onto the floor. It did not matter who she had been in life up until this moment because she was dead just like that.  
  
“You have two options and only two options. Attack your classmates and hope for the best, or end up like your friend there.”

“Oh, I get it. So this is the rom where the student council killing game took place. The pitter patter, that’s not rain dropping but blood. The footsteps are people running back and forth desperately, and that pop, pop, that’s bullets. I guess it’s muffled because we’re too distant form it.”  
  
“But the killing game never happened.”  
  
“It’s true, it was undone. It was made to never happen by Kumagawa-senpai. Maybe this building remembers even when we don’t. Hmm, hmm.”  
  
“Why do you keep hmming?”  
  
“I’m trying to sound smart. It’s an old detective trick. Let’s see, the great detective gathers everyone and says, “Well…” Since there is no great detective here, I’ll say it in his place. Sorry for being such a poor substitute. The mystery of this room, or rather the mystery of that girl who can be seen in two shockingly different lights. Whoops this isn’t good. If this is a revealing the culprit scene there’s something that must be said. It’s proper etiquette.”  
  
Shuichi walked back to the podium. He leaned his own elbows on the edges of it. As he did there was something crooked about his posture, like one of those pictures you had to look at from an angle. “I challenge all the readers. Which Ikusaba Mukuro-senpai is the true one?”  
  
“Both of them are correct.” Makoto said without hesitation.  
  
“Oh, an answer which doesn’t choose either side. That’s so very like you, Naegi-senpai.” Shuichi’s posture became more crooked, he fiddled with the brim of his hat pulling it over one eye.  “I’m surprised that you get along with a scary girl that well. I thought you were a timid type like me.”

“I’m not the brave type either. That’s Kumagawa-senpai. I just wasn’t thinking about it.”  
  
“Hey, hey, Naegi-senpai did you know the secret of this room to begin with? What happened here?”  
  
“Yeah, I wasn’t thinking about that either.”  
  
“It’s a lot to think about I guess. I mean you’ve graciously forgiven Ikusaba-senpai but do you think those old student council members would? Well I guess it’s more forgivable since they didn’t really die. I don’t think there are any laws on murder if the person who got murdered suddenly came back from the dead. But, it’s a bit off.”  
  
“Off?”  
  
“Off, like tilted.” At that exact moment Shuichi tilted his hat further. He looked at Makoto with truly unbalanced eyes, as if he were afraid of looking directly at something. “Last year when you made that speech in front of the student body you said that the problems of this school could be fixed as long as you confronted them. Aren’t you hiding what Ikusaba-senpai did from everybody?”  
  
“That’s just…”  
  
“To protect her? Oh, there was somebody who did something similar once. They broke the rules of the academy to protect someone they loved.”  
  
“How do you know about that?”  
  
Shucihi finally lifted his hat again. It was the first time he had looked Makoto in the eye the entire time and Makoto suddenly began to understand Shuichi’s fear of looking others in the eye. For the third time he said, “I don’t know anything. You’re the one who knows.”  
  
Kirigiri had told him secondhand. About her investigation into Yasuke Matsuda. The memory specialist who interviewed Enoshima Junko shortly before she got her memory loss disease.  
  
Hey, they're using me as a negative example when I’m not around.  
I mean you’re right nobody should be like me ever, even I’m ashamed that I turned out this way, but it’s still uncool.  
  
“Though I’m sure it’ll work out better for you, simply because you’re involved. Things usually do.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Nothing. I was just trying to wish you luck. I think it’s a good thing, protecting someone you love. Especially since I’m so useless when it comes to protecting KIrigiri-senpai. Do you think you could protect her too?”

“Saihara-kun…” Makoto said his voice still sleepy. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. We still haven’t figured a way out of here.” Makoto went fishing around in his desk. He already had known since the beginning, he could not get upset at Saihara for saying that over and over again because that was true.  
  
The kanji on the wall was a word he had been ignoring. It was strange because usually it was his favorite word. ‘Hope’, over and over again written on the wall rotating around them. He could not imagine hope being used as a prison so he had looked away.  
  
“You can’t leave until you kill each other, right? Then maybe… we just need a little blood.” Makoto grabbed a mechanical pencil out from under the desks. He put his own hand on the table and then lifted it in the air.  
  
Before he could slam it down in the center of his hand however, the door suddenly opened. “Wait, wait, wait don’t do anything reckless.” A middle aged woman with wavy long purple hair, and orange eyes suddenly stepped into the room. She wore a loose green shirt, over a black sweatshirt, and red sweatpants. She looked like she had stepped out of a hip hop video from the nineties. A white baseball cap was worn with the brim pulled off center. “Yo, Makyu. You were taking like forever to get out of here so I came to pick you up instead.”  
  
The moment that girl suddenly entered the room, Shuichi clicked his tongue in annoyance. Then, he bit his tongue going completely silent.  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
Makoto wondered if he was ever going to get accustomed to these weird events. The fish out of water should really develop lungs at some point instead of flopping around helplessly.  
  
“It seems you guys were in the middle of guy talk. Sorry to interrupt. I think it’s very important for male classmates to talk about their feelings as a bonding experience, even if it’s just gossip. Anyway…” The woman had been staring at a smart phone in her other hand. She flicked the screen and smiled. “Oh nice I got an SSR. One premium lucky student from my roll.” Apparently she was playing Gacha at the same time as talking to them.

“Oh uh. I’m glad I could help out. Well, it probably wasn’t me.”  
  
“The correct solution this time was to just wait for help, but you immediately jumped to sacrificing yourself when it didn’t seem that was working out. How strange.” That woman said with a tilt of her head. “I was looking for Sode-chan, but you’re Makyu, right?”  
  
“Makyu…”  
  
“Like Makyuuuu! Makyunn! Makyaaa! Makyuuutie!”  
  
“Oh uh… that’s me. I’m not sure about the cute part.”  
  
That woman standing in the doorway took her eyes off the smart phone she was holding again. “What a coincidence. I’m pleased I decided to move on a whim and got to meet you, Makyu. I’m sure Kirigiri-san didn’t tell you, but I’m his senpai. A human named Gaen Izuko.”  
  
“Did you uh… have to specify that you’re human?”  
  
“Oh well sorry, that’s a good set up for some banter but I don’t have time to stick around. As an adult, I should probably even buy you two some juice at a vending machine. But it’s like I said, sorry I’ve got to go. Whatever problem you’re having with Mukurinrin I can’t help you with that either.”  
  
“Huh? How did you?”  
  
“There’s nothing I don’t know. “

She said it.  
  
“Nothing you don’t know?”   
  
“I know everything.”  
  
So confidently.  
As if she had total control of everything in this story.  
She said.  
_I know everything._  
Shuichi had recently started to say ‘I don’t know anything.’  
Then there was Kirigiri the detective who was the ally of truth who said, “I only know what I know.”  
The only person who said such an annoying phrase as “I know everything’ was Enoshima Junko.  
  
“I’m busy here so, what’s going to happen soon is not really my problem. Then again it’s not your problem as well, nor is it the problem of the girl you’re in love with.”  
  
“What?”  
  
At this Gaen tilted her head back. “You really don’t know anything, Makyutie. You don’t even know that you don’t know anything. It’s not humble to admit one’s ignorance. It’s ignorance. Ahahaha!” She put her phone back in her pocket. Makoto noticed at that moment that she was not holding one phone, but rather there were five shoved in three in one, and two in the other. “I’ll explain quickly then, your principal thinks this old building is haunted, well not haunted but thee's some kind of activity going on here. Kirigiri-chan asked you to come because often hauntings in detective novels actually have real people behind them as explanations. You got locked in this room and then I let you out. As for everything else you don’t know… ahh, I can explain it later if you want but I’d need a favor.”  
  
“A favor?”  
  
“Wow, you’re really good at repeating questions for the main character to answer. No wonder Kirigiri-chan likes you so much. I was just here investigating a few things, but I can tell you… if you bring my niece to meet me. You’re already acquainted with her.  Another coincidence, haha! Good thing those tend to pile up around you. Here, bring Kurokami Medaka-chan my cute little niece to me and I’ll explain a few things for you.”  
  
Suddenly she picked up a phone and threw it at him. She was carrying five so it did not seem to be too much of a loss. Makoto quickly caught it.  
  
“W-why? Why did you suddenly show up and want to help me all of a sudden?”  
  
“Mmm, pity mainly? I mean you’re so cute but you’re just sitting there helpless like a puppy. Nothing’s worse than the truth you’re an idiot, like the lament of a scarecrow without a brain. Oh wait I guess that makes your girlfriend the tin man without a heart, and then who would be the lion without courage? No wait… don’t recklessly introduce motifs like that.”

 _Jeez people are being kind of rough with me today._ Makoto thought as the older woman winked at him.

“It’s fine, it’s fine I’m not insulting you.”  
  
_Did she just read my mind?_ _  
_ _  
_ “I didn’t read your mind either. It’s like uhhh, when comedy partners have been working together for a long time they can anticipate each other’s reactions for their act. I wouldn’t get too upset about it. I’m not singling you out or anything. All humans in this world don’t know anything. They unwittingly live using every trick in the book, y'know like a gestalt. You’re no exception. You’re not special.”  
  
Said Gaen.  
  
“No exception, not special?”  
  
As if she were looking down on him.  
  
“You like when people say that. I know that. You're normal but you're ashamed of that normalness but you're different from Hajimaymay-chan because no part of you wants to stand out either. Don’t worry about it, let’s meet up again later now that things are already in motion. I’m sure we’ll become friends, we’ll text each other like bffs. But not in a creepy way of course because I am an adult.” She left the doorway finally, like she had said everything she wanted to say and decided entirely on her own that the conversation would end there. That was the only thing that mattered to her. “Now where is little sode-chan she’s being difficult to find today.’  
  
As he stepped out of the room, Makoto felt like he was leaving water and breathing fresh air for the first time. He desperately gasped for it, trying to fill himself up so this sensation of drowning would go away.  
  
Makoto had no idea what to make of the encounter that he had had. He was not sure he had ever heard Shuichi talk so much in his life, and on top of that he had an encounter that felt like somebody else meeting him was a main character who had just happened to find a sidenpc that was an important objective marker to a side quest.  
  
There was a story going on already and he was not involved. Even though he was supposed to be the class president. He had tried to do one small favor for Kirigiri and gotten locked in a room most of the day.  
  
Shuichi finally stopped hiding behind him and peeked his head out. “W..what terrifying eyes that woman had. Ah, sorry for not saying anything senpai, looks like you had it rough.”  
  
“It’s fine. I’m used to people saying whatever they want around me anyway.”  
  
“Oh, no wonder you can become such good friends with Togami-senpai.”  
  
“Togami and I have a respect I’ve worked so hard to earn! There’s no way he’d ever insult me like that, I’m the only one in the whole world who could be considered an equal by him!”

 _He has a big blind spot when it comes to Togami, I see._ Shuichi thought, but did not say. “Well, if it was something paranormal then we probably should just not tell Kirigiri-senpai. She gets upset when the explanation tends to be paranormal, she says that’s always a lame cop out in mystery books too.”  
  
“Yeah, I agree. Sorry for dragging you into this.” Makoto apologized even though he was the one who felt dragged in. He wanted to be a good upperclassmen still, he felt like he had barely helped his underclassman in any way at all in this situation. “How about I go buy you something from the vending machine? I usually get lucky and get a two for one when I put the 100 yen coin in.”

Makoto said, trying to ignore whatever was brewing underneath the surface of the water for now because he wanted to be able to keep smiling with his underclassman a little longer. Makoto looked at the phone that he had been given and saw that a game was currently playing on the screen.

He pressed it by accident.

 _Oh, I got a whole bunch of those things called SSRs?_ _  
_ _Is that any good?_

He had rolled ten within the same roll. Lucky bastard.   _  
_ Perhaps Makoto’s greatest strength was his ability to go through weird situations, and mutter. _That’s weird._ Afterwards, but not let himself be affected too much. Like water rolling off of a duck’s back.

 

😈

 

“Are you taking a break from saving the world, Mr. Hero?”  
  
Komaeda Nagito said as he turned around in his chair, without a hint of irony. He was one of the few people who could say such a phrase naturally, the other being Naegi Makoto.

He rested his cheek in his robotic hand, and as his eyes fell upon Hinata he made a small thin catlike smile with his lips.  
  
His hand was robotic because Hinata had quickly fashioned a prosthetic. Junko asked him to do the same for her, but Hinata refused. Mainly because he did not like her. He was not sure if that pettiness belonged to the Kamukura or the Hajime part of his personality. Either way, I'm proud of him he's much stronger than me.

Hinata’s neutral expression turned sour quickly. “Amazing, how if anybody else said that it would sound like a compliment but out of your lips it just sounds like you’re messing with me again.”  
  
Hinata had been hoping to sneak up on Komaeda by surprise. Somehow, even though he was an expert at stepping through shadows, and Komaeda drew while wearing headphones Komaeda always knew that he was coming. He was just a sensitive boy, maybe.  
  
“There’s no way I’d mess with this academy’s savior. Jeez, learn to take a compliment would you? Especially when you’re someone it’s just so natural for me to praise.”  
  
“Hmmm, is it possible Komaeda has something he wants to talk about and is having a Komaeda can’t communicate moment?” Hinata had only come to visit him and already they were bickering as usual. Hajime used to find it annoying, but Hinata didn’t. As he realized that while he was Kamukura he was neutral to everybody. He could get along with all of his classmates this way, he could be whatever they needed him to be. He was made from the parts of one hundred people lazily stitched together after all.  
  
Sometimes people did not connect by being agreeable but rather disagreeable. You figured out each other’s borders clumsily, by knocking your limbs against them, by scraping each other sometimes. He admired the 77th class, he wanted to be friends with all of them, but there really was only one of them he felt like an individual around.  
  
Komaeda was the only one he could bring himself to feel deeply about. Somehow being around the boy clawed up emotions from far beneath the surface, like deep sea fishing. It was clumsy, most of the time it manifested as annoyance, but at the same time Komaeda was the only person he had allowed himself to get close enough to be hurt by them.  
  
Hinata drew closer and closer. Until his face was pressed up against the back of Komaeda's head. It was easy to do while Komaeda kept his chair facing away from him and refused to look back. The stubborn brat that he was the more he wanted attention, the more he would refuse that attention.   
  
"What are you doing?" Komaeda asked as he felt Hinata pressing against him.   
  
"Using the static electricity in your hair to recharge. 10%, 20%, 30%."   
  
"You're one to talk, at least my hair isn't touching the floor."  
  
"You can always recharge with me if you want to. I know it's proper care to recharge your Komaeda."   
  
After that, the subject suddenly swerved again. Komaeda's voice dropped to a quiet, a mood change that was like taking on step and dropping right off a cliff. The pencil in his hand began to tremble as he did. 

“Why do you keep checking on me? I thought… I thought you didn’t have time for someone like me.”  
“I’m surprised you phrased that so politely, good job.”  
  
“Why do you keep bothering me? I thought you of all people would have better things to do. Maybe I’m overestimating you.”  
  
“Don’t say the same thing twice but make it ruder the second time around!” Hinata snapped at him. It was the first time he had actually bothered to raise his voice for quite awhile. If you did not shake it up every now and again, water became eerily still. “Is it that hard to believe that I keep spending time with you because I like being with you?”  
  
“Yes. Completely impossible. You said it so convincingly though, do you have the talents of the ultimate liar as well?”

“Why would that even be considered a talent? If I had it it would have come from Kumagawa!”  
  
“Ah, no let me explain quickly. Kumagawa-kun tells a lot of lies indeed, but he never really tells artful lies. They’re just compulsive. He lied to me and told the color of the sky was purple once, but I doubt he was trying to trick me he was just telling a lie because he can’t help it.”  
  
“Wait, why are we talking about Kumagawa-senpai! I wanted to talk about you!”  
  
“What a poor idea for conversation. What is there even to talk about?”  
  
“How is your game going?”  
  
“My mediocre game which I am toiling away at only for the purposes of letting the true talent of the world shine in comparison, that I hope will be thrown in the trash piles where it belongs and completely forgotten about upon release…”  
  
“I wonder if I can ever ask you an open ended question like that without you immediately starting to monologue.”  
  
“What’s wrong with a good monologue ever once in awhile. Life’s no fun without a little drama, Hinata-kun.”  
  
He still called him that. Hinata was not particular on what name he was called he knew he had too many by that point. For some reason though hearing himself called by that familiar name by Komaeda was like sipping crystal clear water. Once he finished drinking and gazed on the surface again, he was reminded by his own reflection that he was still human.

“Hinata-kun… I’m worried about something but I don’t know exactly how to say it.”  
  
“Oh wow, you mean we’ve been bickering this entire time because we both like to dance around the subject. What an unexpected twist.” Hinata said, his voice entirely dull of emotion. It made it difficult for him to display sarcasm.

“I know what’s going on outside. It’s not like I’m stupid you know, well I am stupid worthless trash but not like Kumagawa levels of stupid. If we were both buried in a dump I’d be buried several layers higher than him. I also know that you’re like me, you chose the path of hope because you wanted to be shown an interesting hope so… I don’t think I’m showing you an interesting hope. Just sitting here, making stupid plans for games I’m never going to finish.”

“Nagito…”  
  
“Don’t you think I should go out there and get involved in things? I’m sure if I was by your side helping you, I could at least show you some interesting hope. I want you… I want you to heal too Hinata-kun. I know… that you also suffered some damage from the game but you’re obsessing over everybody else’s rehabilitation and not your own.”  
  
“Nagito. Listen. You don’t have to do something special to be interesting to me. People are interesting all on their own. Besides I… I don’t deserve it.” Hinata looked at his own outstretched hand. “I hurt all those people in the name of my boredom in the past, that’s why I decided to bear with it. Even if I feel like I can’t do anything, like I can’t even move, I’ve gotta keep going because of all of the lives I sacrificed to preserve my own. That’s… that’s my resolution.”  
  
Komaeda wondered how long this moment of raw honesty would last before they went back to bickering. He doubted it would be very long. He wondered if he managed to notice something that nobody else noticed about Hinata. He hoped so. That was all he wanted, to be useful to this one person now.  
  
Hinata could go out saving everybody else and keep playing hero if he wanted to. If that made him happy, then Komaeda would enjoy his happiness watching the profile of his face from the side. However, Komaeda wanted to help save Hinata a little bit. If he could. If he was not being too presumptuous with that desire. To watch the person who was trying to watch over everyone else right now.  
  
Suddenly, Izuru checked his phone. “I’m sorry, Something’s wrong at the old school.”  
  
“Well don’t let me stop you, superman.”  
  
“It’s not like I’m playing hero or anything I just want to make up for what happened in the past as I’ve explained a thousand times…I still haven’t done anything yet, or saved anyone, we don’t even know where souda is...”  
  
“Then, why don’t I have to make up for what I did in the past?”

“I don’t… don’t you think you got punished enough already ahead of time?”

Hinata asked.  
It was so very like him, to be that raw and honest.  
Komaeda could not say anything for a moment. He did not want to be pitied or sympathized with, he did not think he deserved it, and yet there was one person who had tried to do so unflinchingly and he could not bring himself to turn that person away either.  
  
Then suddenly Hinata had run off.

“Oh…”  
  
Hinata turned back to his drawings. He needed to sketch out the next level of the game, he had an idea where the protagonist used their megaphone as a weapon like a gun. Before he could get too deeply into it though he heard footsteps behind him again.  
  
“Unallowable.”

He had thought the silent footsteps that sounded like Hinata’s were him coming back to check on him, he was an annoying worrywart like that. However, when Komaeda turned his head to check he saw a half mask, and unfamiliar red hair.  
  
“Who…?”  
  
They were in the basement of the Neurology building. Practically no one knew about this place.  
  
“I don’t see Kamukura. Did he leave recently?”  
  
Komaeda shook his head. As his nerves suddenly rose up and he felt like he was swallowing his own heart, from the sudden immense talent he sensed, he could barely bring himself to speak.  
  
“Oh well. I will catch up.”  
  
“Y-you… you’re not supposed to be down here. If Hinata-kunwere to be hurt because of you…” Komaeda quickly snapped the pencil in his fingers. He needed to think of a way to kill the other man fast if he was as dangerous as the aura he gave off.  
  
"Because of me? We are foes are we not?"   
  
"When you read stories are you one of those fools who gets upset when the antagonist does bad things. Well nevermind…” Komaeda stepped out of his chair, and the man stood up fully. He was tall and thin, but wide at the shoulders. He had a half mask covering his face, and spoke with no emotion at all just like Izuru.  
  
“Ultimate Lucky Student, since you are young it would be typical to show mercy and let you live, but that is not my intent. If I let an unstable character like yourself survive, your actions will serve no good to my Lady.”  
  
“What…?”  
  
“Just right now you were thinking ‘I need to kill this person before they find Kamukura’ am I not correct? I also have a special person I’m fighting for. It’s a disgustingly common motive. Anybody who can stray from my lady’s plans must be eliminated. That is based solely on my own judgement, however.”  
  
As the man spoke, Komaeda tried to figure out the Kanji that was displayed on his mask that went from his forehead to where his nose was supposed to be. ‘Unconcealed’ or read another way, ‘Not Ninja.’  
  
What a lame joke. Not humorous at all.  
  
He drew two guns and without another word fired both of them off several times. It was completely different from the time Kamukura had shot him with just one bullet, there was no love in that kind of death at all.  
  
Komaeda had tried to move out of the way, and instead he immediately tripped over his own foot and then fell forward faceplanting into the ground. Because he made such a clumsy mistake he was not standing where Not-Ninja had fired a moment ago. Not a single one of the bulelts hit.  
  
Komaeda tried to look cool even though he had just fallen and tasted the concrete floors of the basement. “As long as you use projectiles, you probably won’t kill me.”  
  
“I see. You can survive out of sheer luck… no luck far surpassing the realms of chance.”

“Typically this is where in shonen manga we would discuss our abilities, I said that for the sake of Kumagawa-senpai whose not here to lampshade that fact. However, I don’t really have the time since I’m disadvantaged already.” Komaeda picked a ball out of his pocket, it was metallic and round. He threw it at the wall, slowly it began to bounce around. As it did it picked up speed and moved faster than either of them could see.  
  
It was fortunate he happened to lock himself in a concrete basement room. It was unfortunate though as he was going to have to clean up his room later because of this, he had knocked down all of his posters.

The ball nicked Not-Ninja in the face. “I see, not only are you lucky it’s like you distort fate itself.”  
  
“Ummm… I don’t think I’d have a power that dramatic…” Komaeda said, trying to be humble again in the middle of a life or death confrontation.  
  
“Well, even if fate loves you, and luck loves you, are you certain history loves you?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
The man continued to stand tall as he was hit again and again by the metal ball. He held one of his guns in the air as he spoke. “It’s a simple question. Do you think you were born to be someone remembered by history, or to die somewhere an insignificant nobody? Let’s put it to the test.” He crossed both guns across his chest, and then aiming at the walls fired off several shots in several directions rapid fire.  
  
The bullets ricocheted off of the walls several time, the noise was so loud it overwhelmed Komaeda’s senses and then he felt something sharp and hot pierce him. Then suddenly his shoulder was cold. He reached forward and felt something wet on it. As he gripped it, he collapsed forward his body was not able to handle much under normal circusmtances just a single bullet was far over his limit.  
  
In cases like him the shock was far more likely to kill him then bleeding from the actual wound. “Only one landed, well within expectations.”  
  
“W-why…?”  
  
“Regular bullets might hit, but ricochets might. Had history wanted you to live, the ricochets would have instead penetrated me.” Not-Ninja said as he stpeped closer and closer to where Komaeda’s body had fallen forward. Komaeda could feel him. The footsteps of the reaper. Would he be welcomed as a friend by that entity which had haunted him his entire life. He looked to see the holes that had been blown in the wall, concrete was blown away to reveal an iron foundation. "No matter what iron will bounce off iron. Some things are absolute."   
  
“So… basically you’re saying I was meant to be thrown out like trash.”  
  
“Don’t worry too much about it. From a certain perspective, everything that is usable once will eventually become trash. It’s like saying we’re all born to die.”  
  
“What a negative philosophy you have there, have you tried a little optimism…” Komaeda choked out between ragged breaths.  
  
“The lady’s story doesn’t need optimism.”  
  
“Story?”  
  
“Unworthy. You do not need to comprehend. This is your exit from the stage. If you have any last words, I will hear them and deliver them to Kamukura.”  
  
Last words.  
Things he wanted to tell Hinata.  
Even though he always lived with death by his side, he had come to ramble about it poetically many times, somehow at times like this he could only hear a few words screaming in his head above all the other whispers. “I don’t want to die… I didn’t want to fight in the first place.”  
  
“What pathetic last words…”

Komaeda could not say anything else as the barrel of the gun had been shoved in his mouth.

 

😈

 

“Are you okay, Mukuro-chan? You look more bandage than girl at this point.”  
  
“It’s fine, the opponent looked worse than this.” Mukuro said in a flat voice, walking by Ikusaba. “Besides aren’t bandages considered a cool fashion accessory for anime characters these days… I think my sister would say something like that.”

Ever since leaving the game the two of them had established a good senpai and kouhai relationship. It was good to have other friends to hang out with besides their boyfriends, and the useless boy they considered to be like family. Though, Pekoyama and Fuyuhiko were technically not boyfriend and girlfriend yet due to several issues.  
  
Childhood friends is such a lame trope. I think we should stop relying on it in fiction so much. I’m not biased or anything.  
  
“Still it’s a little bit strange. Back in the day weren’t you famous for never once getting injured in combat? Now everytime you come back from a fight you look way more hurt than the opponents.”  
  
“Well. It’s harder to fight these days because I have to avoid killing them.”  
  
“I think there are ways to avoid fighting without killing people or hurting yourself in the proess, and besides the point is moot if you’re the one who dies. That still counts as a death.”  
  
“Yeah, but it’s like… less of a loss.”  
  
“No it’s not.” Pekoyama said firmly. She had not taken such a vow, she was sure if Fuyuhiko asked her she would still swing her sword without hesitation. She was just lucky then, she had happened to have such a kind master who did not want to hurt others. Pekoyama had wished Mukuro would find a little bit of that kindness too from somebody after getting to know her. She thought that might be enough, but obviously even that was not enough. Perhaps she needed to also show herself that kindness. Though, Pekoyama was not one to ask how to make that happen.  
  
“Mukuro-chan I think Kumagawa is a nice guy, but I don’t think he’s a good model for how to live your life. It’s like you’ve been taking hits on purpose ever since meeting him.”

“Hmm?”  
  
“I get not wanting to hurt others, really I do but that shouldn’t equate to twanting to hurt yourself.” Pekoyama was not sure how to convey her worth to the girl though. She was lucky to have a cute underclassmen, she wanted to take care of her but Ikusaba had no idea how to take care of herself. Before they could even reach some resolution in their conversation though, they heard gunshots.  
  
Pekoyama rushed ahead of Mukuro, and threw the door open. “Mukuro-chan stand back! Please, let your upperclassman take care of this.” As she said that she drew out the sword she always kept on her back.  
  
The figure in the room turned around in an instant drawing his gun out of Komaeda’s mouth. She had arrived just in time before he could fire. Her sword slammed down hard and he was forced to use the ends of his barrels to block. The two of them struggled against one another for a moment before suddenly Pekoyama found herself slashing at empty air.  
  
“He’s doing that thing Izuru-chan does where he disappears and then steps out of the shadows behind you!” Mukuro shouted out as she had been on the receiving end of that attack far too many times.  
  
Pekoyama heard a click behind her head. She had been in the yakuza far too long not to recognize the sound of a gun cocking. “I’ll give you a chance for your last words.” A voice spoke mechanically behind her.  
  
“What a gentleman, but my classmate is even more of a gentleman than that!” Pekoyama shouted.  
  
The moment he had heard gunshots, Hinata as well had turned back and started running back to the neurology building with everything he had. He just tended to assume whenever he heard gunshots or an explosion Komaeda was involved in some way, and his assumption was usually correct.  
  
“Why do you always flatter me like that Pekoyama it’s so embarrassing.” Hinata said, before immediately noticing the pink that was leaking out from Komaeda’s shoulder and pooling at the ground. It was because he had left him alone for a moment. He had promised he was never going to let Komaeda suffer alone ever again, after seeing how far he had gone to hide his cancer. Izuru’s vision started to turn red.  
  
He disappeared and reappeared behind Not-Ninja. However, Not-Ninja saw that coming and jumped back before he could do anything. “Enertaining. Are you enraged now, or are you simply forcing yourself to be angry to experience that emotion?”  
  
Before he could say anything else Izuru’s vision turned red. He used the talents of the super high school level sprinter to run after him with everything he had. When Not-Ninja went for the steps, Izuru switched to using the talents of the super high school level parkour master in order to catch up with him.  
  
Kumagawa had claimed once to have a talent in Parkour. He tried to wall jump, but mistimed his jump completely and landed in a dumpster. Kumagawa’s not even in this chapter but you should never miss out on a chance to insult him.  
  
He rushed to the medical wing of the Neurology building, before turning around to face him again after being cornered in a hospital room. He cocked both of his guns, only to discover that they were jammed. “I see. Fate favors you much more heavily.”

  
“It’s a boring thing to be loved by, I prefer loving people.” Izuru paused, glaring at the other man. “You shouldn’t be able to keep up with me.”  
  
“Is that something one fake should say to another?”  
  
“Fake?”  
  
“You may have all the talents in the world Kamukura but those are just imitations, you’re a vessel for all the collected knowledge of this academy and so am I. My village passed down the legend of the warrior Ihiko again and again, his amazing skills, his strength, his legendary toughness, we sought to preserve such a unique existence.  However, with the technology used to create you we were able to perfect it.”  
  
“You’re… like me?”  
  
“Yep. Just another faceless nobody.”  
  
“That mask, why are you wearing it?”  
  
“I’m not hiding anything. Just like I said, I was a faceless nobody artificially made into someone strong. That’s why, a fake like you should come with me. You’re trying so hard to earn your place among them but the only place you belong is with fellow fakes who know they’re merely actors on stage, vessels for stories to be told.”

“Did you really think the villain speech would work?” Izuru asked flatly.  
  
“Not really, but I had to give it a chance.”  
  
Ihiko tucked the guns away in his side, and instead drew forth two short blades from his waste. Izuru jumped back instinctively. The other man swung his swords in perfectly timed swings, hacking at pieces of Izuru’s body. Izuru had no idea if the other man’s story was true or not but he had only felt this kind of high pressure fighting another individual when he had fought several times in the past with Kurokami Medaka.  
  
He sidestepped several blows in perfect succession, drawing his arms back, ducking, and jumping up when he needed to. This kind of person, for a reason he did not understand, had cme close to killing Komaeda. No, he knew exactly the reason. They had wanted to sever his connection to hope, so he would go back to being the old Izuru who could simply be persuaded to follow whoever offered him a brief escape from the tedium of his life, even if it was a single ray of light that somehow made it through the bars of his oppressive dark cage. It was his fault Komaeda had almost died. He held onto that emotion, perhaps selfishly clinging to it because he did want to feel that anger exactly as the other accused him of.

Izuru struck at the wrist with the talents of the ultimate disarming specialist. One of the blades flew in the air. Izuru jumped to grab it when he saw the other man get scared and start to run away from him. This could be one of the people currently attacking the academy from the shadows, he could not let him escape.  
  
This time he would not be useless, this time he would be proactive. The academy’s destroyer could become the academy’s Utlimate Hope again. He twisted his body around and stabbed forward with everything he had.  
  
Ihiko grabbed had jumped behind one of the curtains of the hospital beds. Izuru felt his blade sink through flesh. A moment later he stopped and stared at an image that did not make sense in front of his eyes.It took him a moment to process the absurdity in his logic driven brain.

  
Asukasei Hino. One of the original student council members. The only one that was killed by him in the first killing game. What was he…? Oh that was right, he had forgotten. All of thost sudent council members had been revived by Kumagawa and then taken to the neurology building to for therapy after what was called a ‘mass panic hallucination’ that made them attack each other and inflict grievous wounds.  
  
He remembered everything from killing him the first time, the sound of a gunshot, the way he had brushed a hand against his body, the fear in his eyes as his own weapon fell upon him, the squelhing of flesh, the way his heart jumped for just a moment when a bullet shot past his face and scraped him.

Ihiko had not been running away he had lured Izuru into a trap. “How could you do this?”

Ihiko had lifted the boy up to use him as a human meat shield when Izuru was blinded by rage and wanted to counter attack, that was the same reason he had been jumping all around the room like a ninja. Actually, like a not-ninja.

“You’re the one that stabbed him.” The man in the half mask said, as he made his way towards the window. “Don’t forget who you are or what you’ve done, those things can’t be undone by all fiction.”  
  
“Whose side are you on?”  
  
“The side of history. History shouldn’t be changed by something as flimsy as all fiction. Your characterization shouldn’t be changed either, you’re only meant to react, to passively watch, such a person can’t play the leading role.” He hesitated for a moment. “Name yourself.”  
  
“Hinata Kamukura Izuru Hajime.”  
  
“That’s way too many names.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“World Destroyer… that’s a better name for you. Let’s meet again, the princess is waiting for you.”  
  
At that moment as he watched the other man’s figure disappear entirely in shadow and knew he could not chase him as he had to rush the boy he had stabbed to medical treatment he realized something.  
  
The world destroyer realized this:  
  
He had no idea how to save the world at all. It had been so much easier destroying it.


	18. Growing Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I started reading the empty box and the zeroth maria and this chapter was inspired by that way of storytelling.

I didn’t understand Enoshima Junko that should be clear.  
I still don’t understand Enoshima Junko all that much either, even if my feelings have changed even a little bit because of all I’ve been through with those two.  
You don’t know how unbelievably scary a thing it is, to love someone that much and not know a single thing about him.  
  
Enoshima Junko is Enoshima Junko and there’s no way to express it. Before her, everything is zero. Everything she does comes summed up perfectly even like that. No matter what she does that may seem out of character, it always ends up being something characteristic of her. When we were younger Junko never once showed her work when she did math. She was lazy like that. I can see the conclusions but I never see the inner workings. It makes me want to disect her brain. Only a little.   
  
A lesson in mathematics.  
Anyway, this is short chapter is simple arithmetic. When can one plus one plus one fail to equal three? When an idiot like Kumagawa is doing the math. Oh no I’ve solved the question before the chapter even began.  
  
Guess I’ll keep running my mouth anyway because that’s all I’m good for. Those three trying to understand the feelings between them, trying to understand the feelings of each other, just this once to add rather than subtract.  
  
_Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank._

What was that sound? It’s so quiet, like you could completely miss it if you didn’t listen carefully. But the sound is coming from within him. His usually silent and empty self, his hollow void was trying to tell him something for once so he absolutely should not ignore it.  
  
_Clank, clank, clank, clank._ _  
_ It’s like metal is grinding up against something, but what are they trying to erase with all that grinding? What do they want t file off. If the source of the sound was inside him, it has to be something within his body but there was nothing inside of there to erase in the first place.  
  
_Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank, Clank. Clank. Clank._ _  
_ The sound is so small but it’s not. An awkward, unseemly, horrible noise. He could not believe anybody could withstand being around such an ugly noise. It was the sound of metal shavings screaming as they were filed off.  Inside of him it keeps echoing until it’s the loudest noise in the world. Plugging his ears did nothing to keep that screeching metal at bay. Oh, of course that would do nothing, blocking out the outside world just would make it easier to hear what was inside of him. But his realization was too late, he was already cut off and the world was silent. He can’t escape hearing the sound of himself wearing away.  
  
It hurts too. That thing grinding away his insides until he was hollowed out is definitely painful. That was what having a heart surrounded by a maze of thorns really felt like, besides all of that poetic imagery. A constant prickling sensation. There’s nothing to be done about it though because he were the one who grew those thorns in the first place to protect himself, who was he to bitch when it got prickly. Is it guilt? He thought he would stop feeling guilty when everything reset itself, because everything he did and everything he failed to do would all be undone like it never happeened in the first place, but it was an unexpectedly persistent emotion.  
  
_Clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank._ _  
_ He was stupid to say that he was empty before.  
He was being stupidly poetic away.  
In fact he was full of so many things,  
Pain, Loneliness, Longing, Desire,  
Now he was being whittled away.  
His heart.  
All of who he was.  
He was losing what he did not think was possible to lose, he was coming to know true emptiness. Before he had always been dancing around with so much pain, but that pain still filled him up.  
A heartless doll.  
He would lose shape, no a heartless doll was not right that was to generous. He would be the smashed up pieces the doll was left behind. No, that was still too much he was already beyond that point. He was nothing more than the dust that would eventually be left when the broken up pieces were blown away.  
  
After fifty two repetitions, he was no longer who he used to be and he knew that. Unable to bear the tedium, his heart slipped away. He couldn’t communicate meaningfully with others anymore, he had lost sight of what the truth even was.  
Tell a lie enough times and it will become true. He truly believed that with all of his heart. No, he had experienced it with so much of his heart until his heart worn away.  
The whole world rejected him.  
That was to be expected. He had never belonged to real world to begin with, all he ever did was force his way into others. He forced himself into the relationship between Medaka and Zenkichi. He forced himself into Ajimu’s heart when she wanted to not care about humans. He forced himself in between Enoshima Junko and her two precious people, Matsuda and Mukuro. He was meant to always be a transfer student wandering from place to place, he would never be accepted into a classroom, he would never go to a school normally, he would never experience the happy daily class memories that everybody else got. He was destined to be rejected from every classroom in existence, from the moment he transferred. There was no way he could make any of this his own.  
  
He knew there was a way to make all of this better...all he needed t do was give up. To become invisible like the world had told him again and again, to stop forcing himself into things. But he would never, under any circumstances do that. After all, he hasn’t won yet.  
  
Waiit.. Wasn’t he supposed to be empty? Nothing but dust? Someone who would leave no trace behind of their existence? Why does he still desire then? That part of him should have been broken apart when the heartless doll shattered, when the broken pieces eroded away.  
  
Winning, winning, winning, what was that again? Why was he fighting so hard to win? What did he want that he’d fight so badly, that he’d endure so much to achieve it? What was it he could not give up on? What was he suffering for?  
  
“Hahahahahaha”  
  
He could not even remembered what he actually wanted in the first place. After that it was impossible to stop himself from laughing. Why did he torture himself so much going through each repetition? What would he sacrifice anything to obtain? All he can do is laugh. It’s all he can do, and yet he’s even forgotten how to laugh. He’s just forcing that empty laughter, for those sounds to echo through his expressionless face. Vocal chords are being tugged like strings, and his lip and tongue are forcefully moving but he has no idea what laughter was supposed to feel like.  
  
If that’s how it’s going to be it should just end. It’s the simplest conclusion, only because he’s an idiot he could not think of it sooner. Just give up on everything now, shatter like glass and dust and be forgotten. Holding onto something has only caused you more pain. Just give up the last few things that make you happy and accept misery, that’s growing up right? The world will beat on your endlessly for holding onto those things maybe it’ll stop if you give up. Accept your dull and empty existence, and accept everything else, accept the world that has no place for you in it and go along with it’s desires everywhere.  
  
But somewhere deep within him, he knows. The fetter that was one his wish will never let any of that end. So he holds on regardless, he laughs regardless, he smiles regardless, the screw continues to turn.  
  
If the world was going to reject him anyway, then he would reject everything in the world. He would continue to hold onto the things that the world dubbed was meaningless, a waste of time, as common as dog’s barking, the stupid ideas of youth.  
  
He was not wrong. Even if that caused everything to reset, even if that caused him to forget over and over again and still be trapped in neverland, no Jabberwock, he did not think it was wrong to value the things that he valued.  
  
But he was worn out that was true. He was grinded up that was true too. He was a screw that could only continue to turn forward, but the metal spiral ridge around the screw that allowed it to turn in the first place had been grinded away. Then, how to move forward still?  
  
He did not know. He did not know. He did not know. He did not know.  
  
“Hey, idiot!”

That’s right he really was stupid. He was sure anybody who had experienced that much repeated time would have figured it out by now, somebody smarter than him would have learned something from so many consecutive failures.  
  
Oh, wait somebody was talking to him. Kumagawa Misogi tilted his head in the side. He was not on that island, he was not hearing the sound of grinding, he did not go deaf to the outside world. His consciousness had just slipped from him for a moment, or rather it dissociated from him.  
  
He understood. It was understandable. Even he did not like being Kumagawa Misogi too much it made sense his brain wanted to run away from his body.  
  
“Are you having some kind of PTSD flashback in the middle of our conversation or something?” Mastuda said, looking up to Kumagawa who was sitting across the opposite side of the bed.

『No, I was just staring at Junko’s breasts and they struck me as so beautiful I began to contemplate the beauty of life. I’m sorry what were we talking about again?』 As he said that Kumagawa knotted his fingers into Junko’s hair and tugged hard to stop their uncontrollable shaking.  
  
“Ugh, who cares what we’re talking about. This whole rehabilitation is so boooooring.  
Why do towers take so long to build up before you get to the fun part of knocking them down?” Junko whined ineffectually from the center of the bed she was laying on, and rolled back and forth.

『Junko, Matsuda had a melt down and tried to kill us both like two hours ago.』  
  
“Yeah, that was two hours ago, not now!” Junko whined again, covering up one of her eyes with an outstretched arm bent at the elbow.  
  
“Hey! Don’t talk about me like I’m not here! You two are already off in your own little world enough as it is already!” Yasuke snapped at the both of them. It was tough being a solo act and watching that comedy duo get along so well. “I was asking what are we going to do about this now?”

Yasuke had experienced a soft reset. He had been pulled back from the brink he had almost plummeted off of. However, the people who pulled him back were Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi. They were basically the opposite of a stable system of support. What crooked hands had grabbed onto him to pull him back from the abyss.  
  
Kumagawa’s arm which had been twisted beyond recognition, was now set in a cast to the best of Matsuda’s ability and in a sling around his neck. When Matsuda finished he had stood up and walked to the opposite side of the bed to sit again, distancing himself as far as possible. The moment they made it back Junko sprawled herself out on the sheets and buried her head in Kumagawa’s lap demanding that he pet her hair again with only one functioning arm. Matsuda was sure even if Kumagawa was in a full body cast in front of her she would still only think of herself and demand he somehow crawl out of it to attend to her. A princess through and through.

“I don’t think I should be around you two anymore. Whatever is happening with me will only get worse, and… and you two aren’t doing much better either.” Yasuke said, as he leaned back against the wall in the furthest corner in the room and crossed his arms.  
  
『Ahh,  but Yasuke-chan didn’t this happen in the first place because you tried to handle it all alone? You’re always repressing yourself until everything overflows and lose control.』  
  
“No fuck you, this happened because you two are annoying that’s my explanation and I’m sticking to it.”

『Well, I guess if that’s the explanation of the Ultimate Neurologist so the talentless me shouldn’t have any room to disagree but...』Kumagawa tilted his head back all the way crooked to look at Matsuda. 『If we were the ones who hurt each other, then shouldn’t we know better than anybody else each other’s hurt? Can’t we take responsibility for hurting each other.』  
  
“You idiot you just used Junko and responsible in the same sentence, that’s never going to work out.” Yasuke said, a grit of annoyance in his teeth.  
  
“Hey, hey, I’m responsible for plenty of things. I’m responsible for the end of the world, and Yasuke-kun’s death.”  
  
“You could say that part with at least a little hint of remorse, bitch!” Yasuke snapped at her. He wanted to throw something at her again but Kumagawa was getting in the way this time. He took a deep breath and tried to look away, further, further, if only he could become a potted plant in the corner of the room rather than a person. “Besides even if I wanted to… there’s no place for me here.”

『Who was it exactly that said there was no place for you?』  
  
“What…?”

『Neither of us said that, you’re the one who decided that all on your own.』  
  
“But I’m unwanted…”

『I guess that’s true, the world doesn’t want you, but in spite of the world we want you.』

“Sh-shut up, but I hate both of you. I can’t stand either one of you. Kumagawa all you did was mock me when I was suffering the most, you always belittle my own pain because you’ve suffered worse, and every time I look at you I’m reminded how insignificant my own problems are because you’re still someone who tries to save others even though you have nothing. Junko I… I… I’m scared, I love you so damn much and I don’t know a damn thing about you. And I know you want it that way, I know you used my love for you to hurt me and yet I still love you and I don’t know why.”

『So what if you hate me? If those are your true feelings I wouldn’t run away from them, so many bad things have happened to you because you met me, so the least I could do is accept them. And Junko, I’m sure she’d say something annoying like ‘The more hate you feel for me will make me feel even more and more despair’.』  
  
“Hey, those are my lines! Quit trying to steal my lines! The only kind of character that can pull off those iconic lines and make them work without sounding like a try hard is me!”

『Junko, if you don’t want other people to speak for you then you can speak for yourself for once. Laaaaaaaaazy.』

Kumagawa really did just treat her like a teen girl. A spoiled brat. It was strange to Yasuke, because he had grown up with the normal, blonde, airheaded teen, the inconsiderate always getting into trouble but still somehow likable Junko. Yet, no matter how much he tried he could not quantify her that way. Enoshima Junko is Enoshima Junko. If she was anything else but Enoshima Junko she would cease to be important to him.

“That’s too much effort. It’s tiring enough already just being me, being this perfect and beautiful all the time, and I’m already starting to crack under the pressure of being me so why should I bother explaining myself?”

『Junko it’s like I’m always saying you’re missing out on deeper chances for despair because you’re always turning your nose up at things. I guess you really don’t care that much about despair.』  
  
“What! Shut up, I care about despair! I care like sooooo much! I’m not tsundere about despair or anything, I’m the full derespair!”

『I thought you didn’t care about anything, it was all too dull for you to care about.』  
  
“Look, I may be a nihilist but I still love beauty. There’s nothing more beautiful than despair.”

Yasuke watched the two bicker, confused again. He had never been able to keep up with Junko conversation wise, or even wrap her head around her despair stuff, she just burned too brightly for everyone around her. She was like a far off light to him that he wanted to protect to shelter its warmth.  
  
It was odd watching Kumagawa treat it like a serious philosophy debate.  
  
“Fine, Yasuke-kun.” Junko looked at him again. The moment he did he felt his spine freeze, such an intensive gaze made him want to melt away in an instant. He knew he truly existed as long as he was in the center of those eyes. “My real feelings… I hope they fill you with disgust.”  
  
Because she was bored? That was the only reason his life had to fall into ruin.  
  
How terrible was tedium. It was terribly tedious.  
  
For Enoshima Junko there was no stronger expression, none truer, for like is all that like knows and she never escaped that thing called ego so she could only continue to compare herself to this miserable, all encompassing self. This tedious self. If only there were a higher expressioning, a stronger one, then at least there would be movement.  
  
She lied there stretched ou, inert; all she could see was emptiness, all she could pour her love into was empty containers with no bottoms, every move she would make would become emptiness.  
  
All summing up to zero, a perfectly rounded ut equation from the outside looking in. In that case then the calculations did not matter, and life was full of tiny little calculations that everybody else got to weight in their head on a daily basis that instantly made sense to her.  
  
She could not even suffer pain. What a spoiled thing to complain about when she was surrounded by Kumagawa who was driven mad by pain, and Yasuke who she had pulled down int screaming, dying pain.  
  
But complain she would.  
  
At least the vulture kept pecking on prometheus’ liver, and Loki had the poison dripping down on him, at least there was an interruption however monotonous. She was the one world destroyer left unpunished, so of course she wanted to destroy the world even more.  
  
But even if she had experienced pain it probably would not have made a differene. Even pain had lost its power to refresh her. WEre she offered all the world’s glories, or all the world’s torments they would affect her indifferently. All she wanted to do was keep lying here curled up in Kumagawa’s lap her hair a mess around her. She would not turn over on the other side to reach or escape them.  
  
Even death itself had died and lost all appeal to her.  
  
She could have still tried to bear with it all of course, she could have fought this feeling of emptiness tooth and nail to the very end, but why? Even if she did, it’s not like she would become somebody who could belong anywhere, who could feel like they were a part of anything.  
  
She had been born in a way that made her different from everybody else, functioning on a different level right from the beginning. She was simply too smart for the rest of the world in a way that was fundamentally incompatible, and the isolation from that was going to drive her insane one day as her brain would never stop going into overdrive unless she took and ice pick to it and lobotomized herself.  
  
The end result would have been the same. Even if Ajimu had not done whatever she did to her brain, she was pretty sure the symptoms of her brain functioning at too high spec of what a human could handle would have set in and she would have started falling apart at the seams anyway.  
  
She realized that at an incredibly young age. How unbelievably fake it all was. Everybody believed in something that she had been disqualified from, from the very beginning. She could not be distracted by the same things that distracted everybody else, those kinds of things would never register to her, and she could not even feel the same way the vast majority of people felt.  
  
The day she realized it, it was scary. Unbelievably scary. Junko came to love despair at a young age, and grew to be deeply obsessed with it. That was the official story. She did not disagree with that assessment. However, it was scary. Knowing she had been born, and would never once see anything in life that others did, that she had been born this way was scary.  
  
Lack of control was always scary. She had so much control and so much insight that there was none at all. The day she realized it. How shallow people were. That they were simply choosing from a set of predetermined reactions. That all they needed to do was change between a certain set of masks.  
  
Human interaction was so simple. It was so shallow. She wondered why others puzzled at it so much and presented it like the great mystery of life. Everyone around her was simply presenting themselves with masks in order to be liked, and that was it. They were all struggling for the same happiness, but that happiness seemed utterly dull to her.  
  
Then on that day she realized, suddenly when she was talking to an adult saying what she knew they wanted her to say as usual, the mask that was sitting on their face slowly fell off. She watched it clatter across the ground but there was no reaction at all from either of them. The adult simply kept talking, even though there was absolutely nothing underneath their mask.  
  
The next person she saw, and the next person, and the next person. As she ran by them their masks fell off but they just kept going. They did not even seem to realize it. They were all a bunch of shallow fakes.  
  
Then there was her, the shallowest and fakest of them all.  
She was just a kid though, she had the intelligence of an adult but her heart was still that of a kid. It was scary, unbelievably scary, seeing all those masks fall, seeing nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. It was scary because she knew that she herself was nothing.  
  
She had run away from everybody and every thing and gone to hide at the same playground she always did. As she curled up in the sandbox she started to cry. “Hey… Yasuke-kun do you regret meeting me?”  
  
The boy who always ran after her when she ran away had finally caught up with her. The small and childish Yasuke who had nothing happen to him yet, smiled at her with genuine innocent. “What are you talking about dummy? You’re really amazing! It’s always so fun being around you!”  
  
“It’s not fun. And even if it was, I don’t feel anything about it. From me being born, to me living right now, I can’t think of a single reason to be happy about it. It’s all so meaningless.”  
  
“Huh? You really think so?? I don’t think there’s something meaningless in this world.”  
  
“Then you tell me, why on earth was I born? What’s the purpose of someone like me enduring this existence?”  
  
“Huh? Gosh, you always say such weird things. You’re just a kid you know. You’re just overthinking things, it’s simple, you didn’t see it because you think too much stupid.”  
  
“How can I think too much if I’m stupid? It’s not mean to bully girls, Yasuke-kun.”  
  
“I’m sure you were born to become happy.” Yasuke said, looking her directly in the eyes, smiling with a simple happiness that she would never be able to feel. Filled with turbulent emotions that he felt so easily.  
  
That promise too was equally fake. He was just saying what he was supposed to in this situation. It was a childish promise that he probably was not going to keep. Like when childhood friends said they were going to marry. Yes, typical, typical, typical, oh so typical, so why…  
  
Why did something like this reach her?  
Why was she burning up inside?  
She knew Yasuke would never be able to live up to those words, but she wanted it.  
She wanted to feel like a normal girl would in this moment.  
Even when she was that young she was still a victim to her desires.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah, of course! I’ll be by that side, and no matter what when you find that happiness I’ll protect it for you.”

Enoshima Junko is Enoshima Junko.  
Her importance to Matsuda was just a manipulation on her part. She never showed the true her to him. That may have all been true, but still…  
It was all fake just the childhood friend’s trope in action.  
Yet… Even things in fiction that were entirely fake could still move people’s hearts.  
Because she heard those words.  
She began to move.  
  
_I became me._

Those feelings did not just exist for Matsuda though.

Until she was seventeen she did not realize love too, could be an unpredictable thing. She thought that was just a lame movie trope.  
She loved her sister and Matsuda but those had also been instances of tricking her own heart into having those feelings. They were long games she was playing against herself, where those two just happened to be pieces on the board. Or so she had convinced herself.

Living until she was seventeen took much longer than she realized. Maybe it would have been better to destroy the world as an evil twelve year old and shave off a few years of tedium.  
  
How may times had she thought that life was too long and she was merely trudging along by force of habit carrying her to the end. She had been thinking about dying for the longest time, she was living only for the sake of one day dying.  
  
She was bored. Bored beyond all hope.  
Mukuro knew of course, but that was what Mukuro had concluded on her own. She never confided in her sister only ordered her around. Despair sisters did not talk like normal sisters. She never breathed a word of it to anyone, and kept up the pretense that she was happy, bright, energetic as always. Exposing her true feelings would only be more tedious. Until the point which she could destroy the world, she needed to play along with anyone and everyone, regardless of who they were.  
  
It’s not that hard to do. Human interaction is an equation, even if most people are terrified by math. Perhaps she was gifted for being able to see the sublte strings that puppeteered people’s movements, but she was convinced that if they were there everybody else could see them too. It’s just that they were not looking, they did not need to look, they were too distracted by other things, everything, to notice the fine details. As long as you’re not too picky about your likes and dislikes, what you are and aren’t into, you can be friends with anybody.  
  
Liking everything, liking everybody, that’s the same as liking nothing in particular, and liking nobody in particular.  
  
Everyone surrounded her with happy smiles, and they all said the same thing.  
  
“Oh, you’re so bright, always smiling, and you’re so energetic. You must not have a care in the world.”

_Why yes, you’re right. That’s exactly it. I don’t care about anything in this world. Thank you ever so much for all being fooled so easily._

Really, it was not just her fault that the stagnation took a hold of her.  
Everyone was so selfish, they could have been selfish in more interesting ways at least. All they saw was what they wanted to see, and their desires were all so predictable, everybody just wanted to live lives consisting of the same thing every day.  
It’s not even worth worrying about how she dealt with others, as they were just casual distractions. They were treating her the same way, mistaking that stupid girl act for the real her, constantly showering her in praise for how genuine she was. They just wanted to believe a perfect girl like Enoshima Junko exist and thus they let themselves be fooled so laughably easily.  
  
She could get anything she wanted as long as she never showed them what she was like inside. Over and over and over they would mistake the surface, and think themselves so smart for seeing the real her, and think they were the ones getting what they wanted and by that point they had already fallen for her trap and she would get exactly what she wanted from them.  
  
That was when the boredom started. No one noticed, nobody caught on, nobody even thought of stopping her. The people that knew her best and knew how rotted out she had become due to all this spoiling still loved her anyway.  
  
They all kept saying. “Oh, you’re so bright, always smiling, and you’re so energetic. You must not have a care in the world.”  
Her efforts were a huge success. They had all bought into the image known as Enoshima Junko and paid for it with their lives.  
She just wanted everyone to disappear.  
  
One unremarkable day, she stood surrounded by strangers pretending to be her friends, and making the same meaningless chatter as usual with a smile on her face. It was sudden. It was not a dramatic revelation at all, it was hardly backstory worthy. But it was still something she undeniably felt. She could finally give a name to this emotion.  
Loneliness.  
_Oh, that’s right nobody is like me in the whole world._ _  
_ _That’s kind of lonely isn’t it?_ _  
_ _Why didn’t I think of this before?_ _  
_ _  
_ Solitude. Despite always having others flocking around her, spoiling her, cmpeting fo r her attention, she felt alone. The term fit so perfectly, that she almost felt like it was embracing her and trying to cmfort her.  
  
However, that word also pushed her away. The pain she expected to feel from solitude never presented itself, not it was… a small dropping of her heart, down a hole. Itw as the anticipation with no reward. DIsappointment. This loneliness was not any kind of pain she could enjoy. It was a dull thobbing that never left her. Dull. Dull. Dull. Dull. Dull. A numbness, like a nerve that was perfectly functional for everybody else was dead for her. And she already knew what not feeling like anybody else was like, but this was somehow worse. Like the moment when your tongue became aware of a tooth ache and could not stop playing with the wound.  
  
Everything was black, not a single thing existed in the world besides her, she could not hear anything, see anything, feel any warmth, or reach out and touch anything, and she would have been perfectly fine dying in that moment drowning in blackness.  
  
“What’s the matter?”

Someone had somehow seen through her for just a moment, they had caught a glimpse of that feeling.  
  
“That’s such a pretty smile. Gosh, you’re always so much fun, Junko.”  
  
_Huh…?_ _  
_ _I’m still wearing that smiling face…?_ _  
_

She reached up and slowly touched her cheeks. Her entire face had been moulded into a smile. It changed without her even realizing, yeah, she was so good at this she could play the part without thinking, huh? Her brain worked so well. She wondered why she even needed to be conscious at all.

“Man it must be great living such a carefree life like you, Junko! I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody so real, like no matter what happens you always accept it and it never gets you down. It’s like you don’t care about anything at all?”  
  
She laughed out loud.  
  
“Yeah, it’s so fun.”  
  
They were right. They were seeing the real her. She didn’t care about a damn thing. She was choking through the spasms, she had no idea what she even was laughing about but she kept at it.

The color gradually faded out from the people around her. They faded and faded until they became a washed out blue color. She wondered nce if she had a case of prospoagnosia, but she could still distinguish the faces of interesting people so it was probably just that her eyes were too bored to even make out the details. She could tell what emotions they were feeling and how they would react to every situation and read them perfectly without even seeing their faces.

Voices still called out to her from someplace that had absolutely nothing to do with her. Even if they just sounded like nonsense, she could still give the perfect response in any situation. She went to school every day, but the classroom was empty and she was all alone.  
  
They had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with her world. She might as well only ever talk to herself, because she was never going to find a single person like that.  
  
Like what?  
Hey, like what even?  
  
Then one day he appeared. An absolute nobody with a face not worth remembering. There was absolutely nothing remarkable or interesting about him.

『Enoshima-san are you okay?』  
  
She had forgotten that there was even anybody there next to her, but that voice pulled her back for a moment and she was forced to stare at another invisible insignificant person.  
  
“I’m never okay, the entire point of my existence is to avoid the kind of complacency and being okay with everything that hope brings about. Be more specific.”

『Bossy, Jeez. You’re always in some far off place, even when you’re right next to me it’s not like you’re all there.』Then the next moment later, he took it back before she could respond.    『Ah, sorry there’s no way a fool like you could get it.』  
  
“Hey, you…”  
  
She still had not called him by his name even once. He was not an existence worthy of having a name. She stood there grinning at him. “...Hey, does my smile look like I’m having fun?”

『It seems like you are.』  
  
The instant she heard this, she stopped care. He was just another meaningless scrub. She hated him. She despised him. He was still practically a stranger at this point no matter how much he annoyed her on a daily basis so it was surprising how quickly he was able to draw emotions out of her.  
  
But then this boy whose entire existence she wanted to reject, kept on just saying whatever he wanted to. 『It’s a fake smile, so fake it makes my skin crawl but you know… when people fake a smile they’re trying really hard right? You always look like you’re trying so hard, so even if there’s nothing admirable about you I just can’t help but admire that part of you.』  
  
Again he drew emotions out of her so easily. Her change of heart did not show in her face, but suddenly her chest had become warm.  
  
She was always so busy making things fall for her amusement, she never expected she would be the one to fall next. The world had changed just from meeting him, it was as simple as that.  
  
Just talking to him made her happy somehow. Everything around him seemed to be in flux, always changing from one moment to the next, and she wondered if she could be that way too. She was happy, but she was sad because no matter how hard she tried talking to him was difficult and she could not be straightforward about this new feeling. Something was clearly broken inside her. It was troubling, yet pleasant.

She liked Kumagawa for the parts of him that were nothing like Matsuda, and she liked Matsuda for the parts in him that were nothing like Kumagawa. That had not been a lie at least.

“That’s awful…” Matsuda muttered. “That’s awful, that’s awful, that’s awful, that’s just inhuman.” So many people had died for such petty reasons, and yet. “That’s awful that hearing all of that I still love you. Why…?”

『You’re overthinking things again, Yasuke-chan. I’m sure Junko and you could find some way to patch things up, and work things out, you loved each other to death after all. Also, it’s equally possible Junko could get over you entirely and move onto me and we could be happy forgetting you. Happiness is entirely possible for both options but… I don’t see why we can’t become a trio either? If what you want is to be miserable to punish yourself, then why don’t we just be miserable together?』  
  
“It’s not that easy, besides…I can’t… I can’t believe these feelings.”

『Gosh Yasuke-chan, you’re always in a bad mood, and you’re a worse crybaby then me so why are you always trying to hide it.』

“I can’t… the person who promised to watch me cry won’t look at me anymore. That promise was a lie to begin with.”

『Junko might be a liar, but that doesn’t mean she won’t keep her promises.』  
  
“Eh? But Yasuke-kun’s so interesting when he’s all repressed and miserable.”

『You could be a little bit helpful you know...』  
  
“Or I could make things worse, that’s way more fun for me.”

『Well then, I guess I don’t have to listen to my promises. I’ll just go die off on my own somewhere where you can’t see it.』  
  
“You can’t do that, your life belongs to me!” Junko said, whining like one of her toys was about to be thrown away to get her to behave. Finally, she forced herself to sit up. “Come on Yasuke-kun, I never once stopped watching you. I was always looking at you.”  
  
“I knew it, you’re just putting on another act again aren’t you?”  
  
“Anyway, if it’s all fake and meaningless you can do whatever you want. You can do embarrassing things, you can cry, you can even spend the rest of your life crying! Those are your feelings, characters in a story still have choices you now.”  
  
“You… why would you say this now? Why… even bother… you’re so weird?”  
  
“Ehehehe, so have you given into me yet?”  
  
“...You’re not going to laugh are you?”

“I won’t laugh at you.”

『Yeah just with you.』  
  
“...You’re not going to comfort me?”

『I don’t even know what the hell comforting is, I’ve never been comforted before.』  
  
“Why would I want to go out of my way to make you feel better?”

Yasuke Matsuda before he even realized it, his head was on Junko’s thigh, and his hair was tickling her legs. It wasn’t even that comfortable, her body might have been perfect but she was too angular a person.

“God, you two are the worst. I really hate you guys. You’re only being kind to me for your own selfish reasons, you damn misery fetishists. Why did a normal guy like me end up with you two? What did I ever do wrong?”

“Mmm.”  
  
“Come on now, don’t pretend like you understand.”  
  
“Mmm…”  
  
“I’m totally fine. I don’t need you or Kumagawa. If I had met neither of you my life would be one thousand times happier.”  
  
“Are you troubled?”  
  
“Stop it, don’t be kind to me. I’ll fall in love with you all over again. I don’t need that. I can keep living on alone, there’s no reason to cry in front of someone. When you… I mean, like that…?”  
  
“It was rough, wasn’t it Yasuke-kun? I put you through a lot didn’t I? I hurt you too much, in a way that can’t be forgiven.”  
  
“Yeah, it was rough. It was painful. I was scared. I was so sad. It hurt so much, I thought I’d die.”  
  
“Mmm.”  
  
“I tried hard. I tried so hard. I was so desperate to protect you. Even after learning who you really were I didn’t care, I thought there had to be a way where we could both keep living. I thought I could save you from yourself. I thought I would be able to stop you. Was that what I was made to believe?”

『No Yasuke-chan that was all you. Those were your emotions. You always go on and on about how bright Junko is, but to me you’re brighter than anyone else. You fight for others. You protect Junko. You saw hope in your future. You were always so bright and clear, like a sky without a single cloud in it. I thought you were amazing from the first moment I met you.』  
  
“N..no you don’t get it. I was just desperate. So desperate to make everything right! It’s the truth. I struggled so hard. Because I loved this world even if it was just the two of us, even if I was hated, even if I was despised. Because you were so important to me! I was so desperate to keep it in place. I was scared… I was so scared. I didn’t want you to look away from me, I didn’t want to disappear, and I hated myself so much for feeling that way. I was so selfish. If I was more heroic I would have won, if I was more selfless I would have see what was going on for people besides me! So why… why… why…?”

Yasuke cried, cried, and cried his lungs out, without stopping.  
His cry of why had no answer.  
Things had gone wrong, and none of the three could come up with a sufficient answer as to why.  
Because Junko was selfish.  
Because Kumagawa was stupid.  
Because Yasuke had failed to protect.  
The worst combination of traits and the worst combination of people, there was no resolution only emotion. All he could do was keep crying until his his eyes were raw from it. Even then he did not feel any better, even then he did not feel resolved.  
  
One plus one plus one could not equal three.  
The reason was simple, between the three of them there were just too many missing parts between the three of them. None of them could ever be considered a whole number.  
  
“Damint, I hate this… it sucks.”  
  
It sucks.  
The two most freeing words in the human language. Sometimes you gotta bitch and moan without accomplishing anything constructive, building from it, or advancing your character development.

Those two had listened to him in that moment and because of that he was able to go on, even if all that awaited him was just more suffering.

 

😈

 

『I don’t like what you said to Yasuke-chan. He doesn’t need to be alone forever.』  
  
The next time he was speaking with Kaiki, Kumagawa brought that up suddenly.

『Are you sure you’re not just projecting yourself on him, Kaiki-kun…?』  
  
“Again with the -kun…” Kaiki grumbeld. He licked the inside of his fangs and rolled his head back and forth. Kumagawa could hear the cracks of an older body. “That true love exists and he should totally keep pursuing his love that makes him act like that?”

『Yasuke-chan, his actions were wrong but his feelings weren’t. I know you think everything is worthless, it’s uncommon and cheap but that’s not the perspective everybody has. Some people want to cling onto a few moments of happiness, some people want to cling to love, some people want to fight for those things. I don’t think fighting is a bad thing in that case.』  
  
The eyes of a dead crow. Some part of Kaiki had died long ago and yet he continued living on, continued watching the scenery pass by him, and after that he had decided how cheap things were.  
  
He loved money but he never kept money around either. He had a terrible taste for the finer things in life and liked to gamble, Kumagawa knew that because he kept getting calls from his debtors. To him there was absolutely nothing in this world worth investing in, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, the moment you have it, the isntant it’s in your hands it’s already lost.  
  
Accepting that you can never get hurt again.  
He was smarter than most people, he saw things people did not see, heard things they did not hear but that had always been a curse. Because no matter what he saw, no matter what he heard, no matter what he knew, and no matter how he acted his actions never seemed to yield any result.  
  
The world was not going to welcome a person like him. So he had given up a long time ago, and decided to live on the fringe.  
  
The person that he loved.  
Died of a heart attack after childbirth.  
Died with his name on her lips and a last request for him.  
He didn’t think about it once in fifteen years, and it was better that way.

He had stopped getting worked up about what everybody else seemed so worked up about. Most of the bad things that happened to him, he laughed off. He was sure eventually, the statue of the comandante would show up to dinner with him and drag him into hell for what he had done.  
  
So he decided to live like this in the meanwhile. He never really got affected by things. Even if things did not go his way, he could just laugh them off, but it was the hollow laughter of a crow. It was a murder of crows, all crying out at once, making their ugly cawing noises.  
  
It was different from the laughter of Kumagawa Misogi, alike but different. That was what he could not understand, what he could not make sense of, what motivated this child who knew for certain that he would lose to always fight so hard.  
  
Fight so hard to the point of hurting himself. Kaiki shuddered visibly. He folded his hands in front of him to stop himself from trembling, but the candles had already gone off behind him.

“You’re in pieces right now. You almost lost your arm. What, you love your girlfriend so much you wanted to be matching with her?”

『M-maybe!? Shut up!』

“No matter what from now on, don’t use all fiction to undo that wound. Or else you’ll keep hurting yourself in the exact same way, that arm will be broken over and over again and you’ll have learned nothing.”

『So you’re just telling me to shut up and take it! What good will that do? What good has that ever done? That’s what the whole world has told me, that I shouldn’t whine, that my problems aren’t as bad as I think, that I still have to keep up to everybody and any stumbling on my part is just an excuse!』  
  
“If it’s not, then why are you still whining and making excuses? If you want to be manly for the sake of that girl why do yu spend all your time complaining about shonen jump?”

『Shonen jump is hella manly! And it’s fun! And… if narratives were bad, if they were all bad, then… people wouldn’t create them in the first place! Somebody put a lot of work into writing that, somebody inked all of it, somebody worked so hard because they wanted somebody to see the world the same way they did, they wanted them to understand all the pictures in their heart so! So! So!.』

Kaiki merely tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow. “So?”

『I’ll stop using all fiction, I do want to be human and I want to stay by Junko’s side, but I don’t think I was wrong. Maybe the world is worthless and nothing is all that special, but those things are still special to me. The world… is going to try to pry them from my hands anyway, so I don’t see why I have to give them up.』

“Is the world your enemy? I didn’t know you were such a special individual, you really are so manly and important these days, Kumagawa.”

『That’s just how the world is.』  
  
“...”

『Fun.』  
  
“...”

『Love.』  
  
“...”

『Kindness. The world will try to stamp them out. Maybe you’re right and they don’t have any special worth on their own but... 』  
  
“...”  
  
『That doesn’t mean I have to give them up. The reason I want to be around Junko, is I want to smile, and make fun of dumb manga things with her, and talk about stupid worthless stuff. That’s why I think it’s worth fighting for those things anyway...I… I won’t use all fiction.』  
  
“You say that but aren’t you thinking, that the moment Junko becomes seriously hurt you’ll use all fiction anyway regardless of the consequences?”

『Haha, you know me too well. It’s weird… how did we meet again like this. As an opponent I need to confront and defeat at this time…. It’s almost perfect. I wonder if this is punishment too for using all fiction too much.』  
  
“Don’t drown too much. I mean to yourself, not your powers. That's nothing other than narcissism.”

『Narcissism?』  
  
“I mean, don’t drown yourself in a tragic situation. You merely hard some weird idiot try to destroy your school. Concerning that you’re a one sided victim. Let’s say that in the rare case that there is something like divine punishment… that only goes as far as you losing those years off your life. I doubt it would go as far as to target your girlfriend, your loved ones, and tear them away from you through some means. That’s a very specific kind of karma for a god to follow and gods are notoriously vague and nonspecific.”

『So basically you’re saying I’m not special?』  
  
“Yep. Quit seeing everything in terms of wins and losses.”

『That’s hardly news Kaiki-kun. I’ve been told that all my life.  Even if I were to give up all of those things though, I’d never be normal, I simply can’t be no matter what. Even if I were to strive to be normal, I’d just be cutting off some vital part of myself. I thought since you were an outsider you might understand me but... 』  
  
Just like the last time they had met.  
Kaiki could not understand this child who fought to the point of hurting himself.  
All he could do was worry.  
There was a child in pain right in front of him and there was nothing he could do about it.  
Scary, scary, scary, scary, scary.  
More proof of what a useless adult he was, and what a coward he was.

『You’re right this is pointless, but it’s not even the sunglasses nihilism, it’s just the unfun nihilism.』  
  
Kumagawa was drowning right in front of him.  
He saw a child drowning and he was doing nothing of substance.  
Adults really were powerless, they were supposed to help children but they hurt them more often than not.  
Did things like happy families or good parents even exist in this world?  
Adults were powerless but then again, everybody, and everything in the whole world was.  
Kaiki just kept staring with those dead crow eyes of his.  
He kept observing.  
He knew his place, all he could do was fly large circles around the soon to be dead and then with his beak, pick the meat off of their corpses.  
  
When he first met Kumagawa Misogi.  
In other words several years ago, all he thought was that he was a pretty fragile-looking kid. Fragile, and in critical condition.That image hasn’t changed to this day. The fact that he was still alive was a miracle. Sucha  fragile person, to survive the past eighteen years without crumbling…  
  
His mother and father crumbled, they went to a cult to soothe their worries and handed their child over eventually without a care for what happened to him but the son didn’t crumble. It was sad, it filled him with all sorts of terrible feelings, thinking that someone who had already endured so much as a mere child might one day crumble. That all of that effort would be worthless. Not a single scent.

He blinked.  
“Sunglasses nihilism?”  
What was that.  
Not a phrasing he was familiar with.  
But perhaps it was slang for highschool kids nowadays.  
No, no he couldn’t follow that at all.  
He was being left behind.

Kumagawa Misogi stormed out.

 

😈

 

  
After he stormed out, Kaiki thought he would get peace and quiet for awhile. Eventually if Kumagawa wanted to he would come back on his own. He sat in a cafe not particularly troubled.  
  
Though he was surprised when the first child that came to bother him was not in fact Kumagawa.  
  
“Matsuda?”  
  
“I wanted to ask about the man in this photograph.” A photograph was thrown across the table. Kaiki in his college days. How embarrassing. He barely looked any different than he did now. He must have been born an old man.  
  
“Sure, pay me money. Though there are better people who can tell you, I always avoided Fukurou. Besides, I’m a ghost buster the response I give isn’t going to necessarily sound sane.”  
  
“That man right there keeps haunting me as a ghost.”  
  
“Ghosts don’t exist. You’re probably just talking to yourself.”  
  
“They do and he’s a particularly annoying one. I would know if it was me.”  
  
“Fine then, pay me money and I’ll exorcise the ghost.”  
  
“Are you really going to do that?”  
  
“No.” Kaiki admitted without a hint of shame. “But I’ll still take your money anyway.”  
  
“”What a one track mind. Really, why do I always end up getting surrounded by failures of adults.” Yasuke lamented as he leaned back in this chair.  
  
It seemed no matter what Kaiki did this child was not going away any time soon. “Where are the other two loud children?”

“Shitty River needed cheering up, so Junko took him out on a date, and by date of course she means he can hold her bags while she goes shopping in the mall.”  
  
“What’s wrong with that child? He needs to acquire some standards, or at least taste.” Kaiki said as he stared down into his own bitter black coffee watching the small pieces from the grinded up beans swirl around in the drink. “Peter pan is dating the thief that’s missing one hand and one eye, this metaphor makes no sense at all. The crocodile should come around and kill her already so I can get rid of this headache.”  
  
“You’d probably stop getting so many headaches if you ate something other than coffee. I haven’t seen you do anything but sip coffee since we came down here… do you… do you even eat?”  
  
“...Fine, I’ll tell you what I know.”  
  
“I feel like you’re avoiding the question.”

Elsewhere the boy with bad taste was currently having a feast.

『Junko you’re right! Carrying all of your stuff was really fun! I had so much fun being your bagboy, I mean boyfriend on this date.』  
  
They had spent the last few hours in the mall buying Junko things that she looked pretty in. And shiny things that made her smile. And looking at the stores Junk wanted to. And stopping to stare at the windows Junko wanted to see. And of course using the money that Kaiki had lent Kumagawa for his recovery to buy Junko useless Junk that she was probably just going to throw away later, and outfits she was never going to wear because she had packed about three months worth of outfits already for one visit.  
  
Yet.  
That is not to say Kumagawa did not have his own fun, or things went entirely to Junko’s plan. “How exactly did you drop, everything? How did everything break? You just dropped the bag and somehow the clothes got all torn up, it shouldn’t be physically possible to be as bad as carrying shopping bags as you are!”

Their entire shopping trip had been a waste. As usual they had got nothing out of it. It was barely worth narrating.  
  
Junko stomped her boots and paced around with her usual mad energy. “Uuuuuggggh, why did I even bring you?”

『Because this is a date? And I’m your boyfriend?』  
  
“Excuses, excuses!”

『How is that an excuse! It’s just a fact!』  
  
“Your entire life is just one big pathetic excuse that’s how!”

『I knew she was going to say that!』Kumagawa overreacted on purpose, and then looked up. Even their usual two person act was not quite enough, he could only keep staring forward with those blue gray eyes of a dead fish. One sitting at the bottom of the ocean, staring, staring, but not seeing anything. Not feeling the need to swim up.  
  
Then he looked back to Junko. 『You’re not going to ask me what’s wrong?』  
  
“I don’t care.”

『Oh yeah, that’s probably the right response.』  
  
Before he could go back to staring, Junko grabbed him by the wrist with her one hand and pulled him forward. “Come on, there’s somewhere else I wanted to go.” Kumagawa did not resist. He was good at that at least, letting himself get pulled along by her whims.  
  
Really, really, who was he, Zenkichi? The comparison made him want to laugh. There was no way even between him and Junko he’d ever have the happiness that those two had, or that he would be half as good of a person.  
  
All this time thinking, ruminating, on what he did not have, on what he was lacking. What did he have to begin with? He was starting to forget. His sole point of conenction was the hand with fake nails, digging into his skin at several areas, harshly dragging him forward. It was like a bundle of thorns had wrapped around his wrist, and yet he could not bring himself to let go.  
  
Should he just let go of everything…?  
If it meant, an escape from this pain.  
  
Before he could think about it for too long he caught sight of where Junko had dragged him. He saw cage bars all around him, but they were not metaphorical ones. No, he was just standing in the middle of a zoo.  
  
Junko had stopped to check the signs, and once she figured out the direction of the bear exhibit she turned around to grab Misogi and made a bee line exactly in that direction. A few moments later Kumagawa was watching her quietly as she pressed her face against the glass.

 _Quietly._ _  
_ He wondered if he had calmed down. If he had changed at all from his old self, that was so loud, throwing tantrums about the elite, and loudly demanding they look at him, they let him fight against them, that he should win and be just as important as they were.  
  
If he had calmed down at all since then. If he had changed just a little bit… but, would that be a good thing? Hypothetically if he were to change into a normal boy, if he were to leave neverland then Junko would lose interest in him. He would become as boring as everybody else she looked over.  
  
He was only like this because of damage, in all other aspects he was normal. But Junko was not. She had already grown up when she was two years old, her knowledge surpassed most adults, and it was exactly that way she could never grow up.  
  
But if he stayed around Junko, he would have love but he would also get hurt. That was amost a guarantee, because Junko loved that him who was always struggling so hard trying to look cool, who laughed madly like the devil.  
  
He could not leave her.  
He could not get closer to her.  
He could not make up his mind either way, he just wanted to stay exactly still, to stay in this moment observing her from behind as he made faces at the bears in the exhibit.  
  
The world never went how he wanted though and at that exact moment Junko turned around to look at him. “Hey, Hey, Misogi look at those bears they could totally eat us. There’s be nothing left they’d lick the meat off of our corpses. Don’t you think they’re just the perfect animal, perfectly marketable?”

『Junko… do you…? Do you just like bears? I don’t think you can say you don’t have any interests or likes anymore, you seem to genuinely like bears.』  
  
“That’s just an act I’m putting on. I’m merely pretending to like bears, so I can experience the emotion of liking bears.”

『You know, I’m starting to understand what Kaiki-kun is saying. We might sometimes sound kind of ridiculous.』

“So what, this world deserves to be ridiculed…” Junko pressed her fingers against the glass. If the glass said do not tap she was pretty much guaranteed to tap it. That was the kind of person she was. “Misogi the things that you want, the things that you value, your desires, I don’t really get it. I don’t get them at all. I don’t even get how you’re feeling when you stare off into the distance like that and go all quiet and broody.”

『Is it the hunky kind of quiet and broody at least? Like how you’re always saying Izuru-chan is like?』  
  
“Definitely not!”

『She executed me without any hesitation! What kind of woman is this really!』  
  
“Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.”

『I can’t die just yet. I’ve only just become your boyfriend. We’ve only just started going out. I want to go on more dates with you. Life is way too precious right now.』  
  
“Oh my. You say some pretty nice things, don’t you. Then you don’t have to die.”

『Junko, you’re way too soft. Tell me to die a little more than that.』  
  
“If you’re enjoying it now, why would I? Why would I ever want anything to go how you’d like it?”

『I suppose. If that happened I’d stop being me.』

  
“Although, enjoying yourself around me is rather impudent. I think you should die.”  
  
『Don’t think that.』  
  
“It’s better than saying I’ll kill you, right?”

『Only if your standards are incredibly low.』  
  
“Well yours are, how lucky for you Misogi! You’ve become so used to the misery that you’re never going to escape!”

『Don’t say that with such a pure and innocent smile.』

 "It's progress right! Even if it's just baby steps! I'm making progress."

『I guess you are a baby, so the only kind of steps you can take are baby ones.』

“Ah but… you know things like love, friends, they’re kind of worthless. Nobody knows that better than me. People are replaceable, they can easily be swapped out for one another. I’m sure just like brown bears don’t see the different humans that stare into this glass as anything special or different.”

『You just had to force the bears into that metaphor didn’t you!』

“Anyway, even if thse things are pointless, even if those things won’t fix you, that doesn’t mean you’ve gotta go without them. I mean, even if I had a childhood friend and a sister who loved me. All of that love went to waste of course but…”  
  
『...?』  
  
“I wouldn’t give it up.”  
  
『Ah...』  
  
“Not in a boring way at least. It’s not like I care about your feelings, I’m not even going to imagine what you’re going through right now, the idea of seeing the world through such rotten looking eyes is utterly tedious to me.”

『You don’t have to be mean to my eyes. That’s a cute feature of mine.』

“I’m just saying what I think, and I’m right obviously, because I’m always right, and I know everything. Even more than any adults we might come across."

『Now I feel like you’re just rubbing it my face.』  
  
“Of course I am!” Junk shouted suddenly, and then turned around and grabbed onto both of his cheeks. She reached forward and pulled him, close. Then suddenly rubbed her cheeks against his, on both sides. He had no idea what she was doing, just another whim, she probably just wanted to feel warm. “Prickly, prickly, prickly, prickly…” She muttered as she did, the weirdo.  
  
『Are you having fun?』  
  
“Of course I am. You know you always act like you mean nothing to me, like I could get rid of you at any time, and while that’s all completely true I still am choosing to spend right now with you aren’t I? I’m wasting my time on you, little prince.”

『Huh?』  
  
“Ugh. You’re so thick headed.” She bopped her forehead against his to confirm it. “You’ve been in such a bad mood lately too even though you’re all smiles in front of Matsuda-kun I get the sulky boy, I can’t believe Junkai managed to give you of all people PTSD. I would compliment her if I didn’t hate her. You know… you already deny yourself enough don’t you? And the world denies you too! So why… deny yourself that little bit you enjoy? That you’ve made yourself able to enjoy?”

『You’re just a hedonist.』  
  
“So what we’re already terrible people, we might as well be hedonists.”

『I know you’re okay with just staying the same brat forever but I want to... 』  
  
“If you want to grow up so badly why are you trying to suck the fun out of it? It’s just like when you were sitting in Komaeda’s dream, you just acted all faux mature but you weren’t enjoying it. If you do something, you should do something because it’s fun at least. Didn’t you promise me that?”

『It’ll be fun.』  
  
“Yeah I know.” She turned away from the bears and spun his body around, and on her own hell spun too as she started to drag him. “Hey Misogi, you and I aren’t ever going to be fixed at least what everybody else considers fixed. Isn’t that fine though? Isn’t that more interesting that way?”

『So you just like that I’m unfixable?』  
  
“No… I like… The MIsogi that’s always laughing boisterously, and priding himself over stupid stuff before he gets knocked flat on his ass, and no matter what, no matter how pointless he always gets back up again. That smile on his fae, it looks like he’s really enjoying things, like he’s having the time of his life.”

『What if I can’t be that person anymore, what if I can’t keep laughing?』  
  
“Misogi-senpai! Didn’t I tell you, this world is utterly ridiculous. It’s absurd. It’s chaotic. Lacking any meaning at all. The things you think are important will disappear in a flash. The things you work hard for will work out however they want to with no regard for you at all. No matter how much reason you acsribe to it, no matter how many patterns you detect, it’s all going to blow up in your face sooner or later and when that happens… You’ll realize… That because the world is full of so many senseless things, you’ll never run out of reasons to throw back your head and laugh about it!”

『Gosh Junko, you’re such a bully.』  
  
“Yeah, I am so what? I didn’t work my ass off building my identity to be that popular blonde girl that is the villain in every american high school movie ever for nothing.”

『Kicking me like this while I’m already down. I just keep losing to you.』  
  
“Well you’re going to lose again, because the next place we’re going is pretty kick ass. At least in the fact that it’s going to kick your ass.”  
  
He had been paying so much attention to Junko that the world slipped by him. Suddenly he was standing in front of a concert hall. He was shoved into a seat but before he could even react, Junko turned away from him.  
  
“Okay, be right back I need to go talk to somebody backstage.”

『Wait, let me go backstage with you!』  
  
“No way if you come back stage you’ll just be some creepy mouth breathing  stalker whose all shadowy because he hasn’t left his basement in months.”

『I mean that’s true but that’s not really my fault.』

His gaze wandered up to the stage as he tried to settle in his seat. Eventually he saw the band that was warming up on stage and recognized the lead singer. Sukinasaki Saki, the girl he spent a month with before coming to hope’s peak, the girl he almost became friends with and almost fell in love with.

『 _Ah that’s right._ 』  
『 _In the end I couldn’t find a single person with the skill to defeat anshin’in-san_ 』  
『 _All that trouble I caused, the people I hurt and the times I was hurt meant nothing._ 』  
『 _Though my three years of wandering wasn’t so bad since I got to meet Junko. Even if all I did was cause problems on the way._ 』  
『 _But saying all that suffering was worth it because I got to meet Junko? Is that just romanticism? Yeah it’s probably… it’s all nonsense. I didn’t meet Junko because of everything that preceded before that, it was all just random chance, it had nothing to do with me._ 』  
『 _People fall in love too easily. I fall in love too easily. As easily as dogs bark._ 』

Suddenly, Kumagawa noticed an incredibly loud presence next to him. A boy with pointed and oddly shaped eyebrows, and spiked hair styled up an electric color of gold. He sat with his legs and arms crossed, radiating a serious don’t touch me you’re unworthy vibe.

“Hmm? Um… you’re Kumagawa-kun, right?”

 『... Hey there, Miyakonojou-kun. I didn’t know you were in this fic.』Kumagawa had heard from him and his involvement with the flask plan from Medaka, and vice versa before the other boy dropped out of school to wander the globe with his partner.

“What do you mean in this fic? What story would be complete without an appearance by yours truly?”

『Ah sorry about that, it’s just more of my nonsense talk.』  
  
In the background, Saki’s voice called out to the audience. Kumagawa doubted she even knew he was there. She would probably find it creepy that he had shown up if he did. “All right then let’s start the final performance of this cross country tour! Dear consumers tonight I’m not giong to let you sleep! Don’t slack off on things you enjoy! Consume us with all your might! Spend all your money! We are ! We Should!”

『Oh, Kaiki-kun would like this band...』  
  
“Kiwoterae!”  
  
Today they were playing with a xylphone, a piano, and a trumpet. What an amazing talent, Kumagawa was sure if Komaeda was here he would appreciate it, but he could not help but feel insignificant at the sight of it.  
  
He might have been a clown who laughed at the world, but that did not necessarily an aesthete. He just kept looking around wondering where Junko had gone, the only beautiful thing he had found from this world.

『By the way Miyakonojou-kun, doesn’t your skill control peopel’s hearts? How does it feel? To control other people’s hearts?』  
  
He did love Junko but.  
Even if they were complimentary, even if they tried to make up for each other’s missing parts, no matter how hard he tried two people could not become one.

“No I, in the end… was most likely not controlling people’s hearts. I failed to change a heart. I failed to steal a heart. I could not even feel anyone’s heart. You are not the only one to lead a life full of failure, after all is said and done, I’m sure even Kurokami-sam and Anhshin’in-san cannot run from defeat.”

『Sometime ago, someone said that a world without victory or loss is a utopia. That someone like me had no place in that world, because I’m a fucker who always lose, what do you think?』  
  
“Huh? That may be a utopia. I’ve thought about it no too. If we had no heart, wouldn’t it be easier to achieve happiness? Wouldn’t the world be a better place. But people, more so than being happy, more so than bettering the world, more so than bettering themselves only desire to have one’s own heart. WIthout heart there would be no worries. But everyone wants to worry I guess. After all, a utopia no one wants to live in is just a ghost town.”

Just then a voice called out to him. He could hear it, risp and clear even though he was in the middle of the crowd. “Uhh… Thank you for the numerous encore calls. And well we’re just gonna do what everyone is expecting. Here we go with the customary new song recital… “

『Huh?』

Saki was looking at him.  
But that was probably just his own self importance he.  
  
“I have a friend. Whatever he does he fails at. Nothing in his life goes his way. Just a guy that keeps losing. Even that guy… just the other day… managed to win someone’s heart! It’s a happy occasion, real happy! I’m happy for them, it was so happy it felt like it happened to me. BUt then I also started to worry that this guy might start stepping down from his fights now. There’s a lot of guys that that give up once they’ve tasted a little bit of happiness. It’s like the guy that gives up because he’s tired of the constant setbacks and failures. I don’t have to say this but, just because you lost doesn’t mean your life’s over. Likewise, just because you won doesn’t mean life’s over either. Can’t say that all winners are superior and that all losers are weak. Of course everyone would rather win than lose, but that doesn’t mean a loss is more minus than a win. Because if you’ve lost… that means you’ve been fighting. So I’m warning my friend don’t get complacent! You better keep standing up, and keep loving and losing in life! There’s only victory because there’s failure! So listen up consumers, a cheer song for those that’s gained a little bit of happiness.”

『Oh.』  
  
“Good loser! Good luck!”

It was no longer good bye good loser.  
Wishing good luck to someone like him, laughable. Pointless.  
He wondered why he felt this way then.  
  
“Heh, that was a brilliant new song. I’m going to have to pre-order two copies, one for me and one for Yukuhashi. Though it was more of a message song than a cheer song. So Kumagawa-kun do you have time after this? It’s a good occasion why don’t you introduce me to your charming girlfriend over tea…I can let you meet my boyfri-”  
  
He looked down to see the seat next to him was entirely empty.  
  
“...? Kumagawa-kun.”

Kumagawa had already gone backstage to find Junko. The moment he did, he put an arm against the wall to cut her off from going anywhere.

『How unlike you, how very unlike you.』  
  
“Hmm don’t you know? The moment I do something, it becomes in character for me. Anything I do is very like me.”

『No, this is very unlike you. I’ve even said it three times now. Hey Junko, do you think you owe me because I was helping you out with Yasuke-chan.』  
  
“Please I don’t owe you anything. Or anybody else for that matter. The entire world owes me everything though, of course.”

『Of course.』Kumagawa repeated, while staring into her one eye. 『I’m sorry, I can’t resist feeling a bit hopeless. You know, Junko. There’s one thing I want you to tell me. About Mukuro and Yasuke, honestly, how do you feel?』  
  
“Let’s see. Frankly they feel like a burden, their feelings that is. But that’s because I’m very light hearted. I’m not really someone who can bear that weight.”

『Can I ask you something that might upset you? If Yasuke-chan were to come to understand you, if you fixed things up between him and you and he turned out to be a better match what would you do?』  
  
“I’d obviously dump you for him in a heartbeat.”

『You’re amazing… You’re amazing because you can actually say that.』  
  
“So if I haven’t done that yet. It may be impossible to be a special person, but you can still become special to someone. I am choosing you. I won't let you devalue my choice, because it reflects poorly on me. You might not think it but I’m actually working very hard right now, if only because you’ll be more interesting when you’re less mopey.”

『Mm. I wouldn’t possibly think you’d do it for any other reason.』  
  
“Such a dumb boy. You know, all that living is inherently sinful and all you can do is suffer and maybe minimize the damage you deal to others sure sounds good on paper but it’s no fun at all.”

『But. There is a lot of suffering, and there’s no meaning to that suffering. At least I don’t think that way anymore. A world like that isn’t very fun.』  
  
“Then we’ll make it fun. Between the two of us. Our world will be so much more fun..”

『Your fun tends to be very bad for other people you know, and people you don't know, and everyone in general.』  
  
“Then show me another way, something even more and more fun! Tell me you just know it will be again! That way we can look forward to the future and laugh. They say make plans for the future and the devil laughs, so you can make plans and I'll be the one who laughs at you!"

In her excitement, Enoshima Junko ignored that Kumagawa was pinning her to a wall and threw her arms around his neck. However he was so caught off guard by this, and probably expecting her hands to go around his neck to strangle him rather than embrace him, that he tripped over his own foot and fell backwards.

『Junko, be careful, that hurts!』  
  
“That’s just growing pains!”

『No, that’s having a broken arm! That’s broken because of you!』  
  
“I thought you catch phrase was saying ‘it’s not your fault’.”

『It’s your fault! It’s definitely your fault! It's your-』  
  
Enoshima Junko laughed.  
Then flushed with emotion she did not necessarily recognize but had come to associate with the antics of one stupid boy, she kissed him cutting him off before they could finish their bit. Then, while kissing hard enough to make the boy gasp for air, she somehow found enough air to giggle into the kiss.   
  
Perhaps growing up was just learning to laugh at the future.  
Rather than dreading every coming day.  
If it was something like that then maybe the two of them could handle it.  
Or they couldn’t and they would both die.  
Well either way fail or succeed it didn’t matter that much, because their struggles were ultimately meaningless. They didn’t need to take it too seriously. Even if they did manage to mature just a little bit in the end they’d die either way.  
  
See, look at me I’m slowly becoming an optimist.  
Maybe all this romanticism isn’t too bad.  
Matsuda Yasuke's romanticism wasn't all in vain. 


	19. He was Aware that He was Still a Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medaka's speech is a reference to a Kanbaru scene.

Let’s remember again that this is a story with a plot and not just Kaiki’s baby sitting side adventures. The moment Iihiko returned to his lady’s side she shoved a foot in his face. Don’t worry it’s not going to turn into THAT kind of scene.  
  
There’s enough third wheeling in this story done by the narrator yours truly already.  
  
The ace of the Shiranui village had always been Hansode Shiranui, but she had been away for too long, and while the princess was gone her kingdom had been conquered, more or less. The usurper princess in her place was now spoiling herself in the ghost town that remained in the village.  
  
Nisenoshima had given up her original identity to stay in character as Junko as all times. That was why it was vitally important that only one person ever be around her when she took the costume off. That man did not even have a face, so it was not even worth worrying about whether he saw her or not.  
  
The moment Iihiko showed up to report back to her, she shoved her boot in his face right on the top of his half mask. Despite getting kicked in the face from a girl sitting on a chair in front of him, he barely reacted. Instead he slowly reached up and began to unlace the criss crossing red laces of her boot. He slid it off of her as gently as one would a glass slipper, and did the same for the other. He peeled off her stockings next.  
  
“You didn’t bring my beloved Kamukura-senpai back to me. What an impudent man you are, returning to me empty handed.”  
  
“Princess. If you wished it, breaking all four of his limbs and dragging him to you is entirely possible but I know you wouldn’t like that.”  
  
“It’s true. Character agency is so important for a story you know, even if in the end it seems like the author is controlling everything the characters must at least have the illusion of freedom, because everything will go the way I, Enoshima Junko-chan wills it, even when it doesn’t go the way I want it to it’s a part of Enoshima Junko’s plan.”  
  
“Pointless.”  
  
“I guess you would think that way. After all I only told you to bring Kamukura-senpai to me and you went straight for dear Komaeda instead.”  
  
“What does it matter the end result would have been the same.”  
  
“Jeez you scoop a guy’s brain out with a spoon and shove it in a blender and suddenly they lose all their creativity. What happened to that certain spark in your eyes? You know back when you had eyes?”  
  
“You’re the only light I need to follow, princess.”

“What an annoying thing to say! Gosh, gosh, gosh, gosh, I’m even trying to be more annoying on purpose as a part of this character I’m playing and somehow you even surpass me. You’re naturally talented! You didn’t need to have all those talents inserted into you all along you could have just annoyed all of our enemies to death.”  
  
“Princess…”  
  
“Princess this, princess that, that’s nice and all but… really what a silly thing to keep calling me! Enoshima Junko is one thousand times cooler!” She roared back at him even when they were this close. Her arms were stretched out held parallel to the ground as he worked on unbuttoning her uniform for her. He was like a faceless servant dressing a noble lady from a forgotten era. Both her shirt, and her skirt slid off of her with no fuss at all.  
  
Finally her underwear came off as well. Even if he wanted to leer at her though he could not because the top half of his face was covered in a mask with the kanji ‘not ninja’ written on it.  
  
“...I see now, so that’s Enoshima Junko.”  
  
“Have you finally come to the revelations about the wonders of Enoshima Junko? An Enoshima Junko a day keeps the doctor away. Biting into Enoshima Junko is like biting into the forbidden fruit. You know, you know, if you want to hear more about it you can pay me a subscription fee of 50,000 yen a month.”  
  
“No, I just remembered something.”  
  
“About how Enoshima Junko is a flawlessly perfect, beautiful woman with no equal?”  
  
“Even if I were to say that the complement would apply to her and not you. You’re merely a fake, that’s why I call you princess.”  
  
“You want so badly to see me as an individual entity don’t you? Puhuhu. Haha no can do! I wouldn’t bother talking about that to a small fry like yourself. Learn your place! You don’t even have eyes! Your expression annoyed me so much that I forced you to wear that mask all the time so I don’t have to stare at your ugly ass face.” She marched away from him proudly, sauntering her hips as she did. It was even an exact imitation of how Enoshima Junko walked. Even with the costume pried off of her, one would have to remove her skin from her body to stop her from being Enoshima Junko.  
  
She sank into the bath water, so low that even her nose was under it. Then, she reached for the tray near the table and pulled out a pair of glasses and a small hand sized journal. “Well, I guess as a result of your stubborn insistence of having actions and thoughts of your own despite being a fictional character of mine, I can at least do some fun character analysis.”  
  
“Ho?”  
  
“Are you jealous? Kamukura-senpai found somebody to protect, in that delicate little prince with white hair and a shattered heart. Yet, the princess you dedicate yourself wholeheartedly too couldn’t give a damn.”  
  
“I have nothing to say.”  
  
“Of course not, because you are nothing.”  
  
He walked around to collect her clothes, folding them and holding them with the utmost of care. “I wonder why you insist on wearing such an old costume. Our seamstresses could make a more perfect recreation of her original outfit.”  
  
“Are you kidding? Oh wait you’re not because you have no sense of humor, and also ecause in general you’re boring and I don’t like you. That’s obviously a precious prop from season one there’s no way I could get rid of that!”  
  
She kicked up her feet idly in the tub while she continued to page through her journals. Eventually she crossed her ankles together and rested them against the porcelain edge of the tub,  the bath water rising to just about her thighs. Bubbles floated through the air, but unlike before they were not a metaphor for love, or delicate feelings, or floaty feelings or anything like that they were simply bubbles. She had poured way too much bubble bath in the tub. As she flipped through the pages she hummed to herself. “Well it’s fine, pu hu hu! Pu hu hu! Rom pa pa! Rom pa pa! If you follow all of my orders that will be a part of my plan, and if you disobey my every single order that will be a part of my plan too. You know sometimes a script doesn’t shine on the first draft, it needs to go through revision after revision and rewrite after rewrite to bring out what’s really special…Ah, I wonder if this development is to your liking.”  
  
Iihiko watched on in silence, without using his eyes as half his face was covered. He stood with his back to the door guarding it.  
  
“My dear, Kamukura-senpai! <3!”

 

😈

 

Whatever she was imagining was of course far more romantic than what was unfolding. That disappointment  was an inevitability as long as those two were involved.  
  
“Nagito, take your shirt off.”  
  
“There’s no way I could show such a distinguished possessor of talent my emaciated and pale, body. If I were to take to my shirt off you’d see that I have no skin underneath this uniform, only a rib cage that I was hiding.”  
  
Nagito Komaeda was sitting on a table in the basement of the neurology building. He was slightly delirious from blood loss. Izuru was completely sure that even if all of his blood was in his body he would still be exactly this difficult.  
  
“I need to look at your bullet wound. It’s entirely for medical purposes.”  
  
“So you don’t want to see me take my shirt off for any other reasons? Then, I suppose that was just me being presumptuous. Ha. Haha. Who would ever want to see that from me.”  
  
“Nagito. Just take your damn shirt off.”  
  
“Don’t wanna.” Komaeda batted his eyelashes, they were long and feminine. “It’s embarrassing.”  
  
“You are literally bleeding to death from a gunshot wound stop flirting.”  
  
“I can flirt and bleed to death at the same time. I, Komaeda Nagito, am a complicated person.”  
  
Komaeda Nagito is a complicated person.  
No truer sentence had ever left the lips of a lying little boy.  
Izuru felt there was nothing to add to this scene at all. However, he was also very angry by how much he had been had. He was like twelve who Kamukura units of angry, which was almost ½ of a normal person’s anger when they stub their toes, or drop something fragile. Not only that but Komaeda’s insistence on flirting instead of just letting him help the other boy, made his emotions even more complicated and confused.  
  
He’s trying to downplay his own injury to cheer me up. Izuru realized that, but that consideration shown only made him more frustrated. As Komaeda could have seriously died but he still acted with little regard for his life at all. So, Izuru acting on his mixed emotions reached for his tie and then with swift hands undid the not and loosened it around his neck. He threw off his jacket behind him, and undid his every button nimbly.  
  
“There, now there’s no need to be embarrassed.”  
  
“Now there’s even more reason to be embarrassed. I don’t have nearly as many muscles as you. The only muscles I’ve developed more than you are probably my smiling muscles."  
  
That was true, Komaeda had a tendency to smile in a way that exerted every muscle in his face. It was beautiful. Even when it was not beautiful, even when it was creepy Izuru could not take his eyes off such an expression and he felt something tighten inside of his chest.  
  
However, Izuru was currently too frustrated to think of such light and flutter flutter emotions. “Raaaaaagggghhhhhh….”  
  
“Oh, I see you’ve engaged frustrated Hinata-kun mode. That’s one of my favorite modes.”  
  
“I have modes now?" He asked incredulous. "Don’t categorize me!”  
  
“Of course you do. Here’s sleepy Hinata-kun face. Here’s hungry Hinata-kun face. Here’s Hinata-kun’s face consumed with desire.”  
  
“You just made the same face every time!”  
  
“No, no, they’re different they’re completely different. I guess you can’t notice the differences because there’s no way you’d study the details of my face as closely as I do yours.”  
  
“It’s not a competition, Nagito.”

“If it’s not a competition why did you just take your shirt off to show off like that.”

“Hajime Izuru Kamukura Hinata-kun.”  
  
“What is it Nagito?”  
  
“Stop addressing me without honorifics. Call me Komaeda-sama, and possibly Komaeda Nagito-Dono.”

“Nevermind, it’s not worth saving you at this point. Die please.”  
  
“Noooooo, don’t say that.’ Komaeda gave the whine of a mewling kitten as he was suddenly cut off. He looked down at his brown green and red uniform. His beloved school uniform was entirely wrecked by this point. Funny, he had just started to think himself as a student of this school, not a worshipper, not a heretic, not a destroyer, just a normal student who wanted to go back to his classes and he had to tarnish his uniform like this. It was almost sacrilegious. He grabbed the bottom of his sweater vest and pulled it over his head. It got stuck on his hair for a moment.

“Here, I’ll help."  
  
“If you’re going too rip off my clothes with those big strong hands of yours let me just warn you. My body might acutally not be worth getting your hands on by such rough methods. If I were to tell this concretely to a blockhead who doesn’t understand an indirect way of saying things, if Hinata-kun were to show his true nature, and use me nearly dying as an excuse to touch me.”

It was really impressive, Komaeda rambling so much when there was a sweater pulled over his face and his hair had been caught in it making him look like more of a cotton puff than usual when Izuru finally laid his hands over Komaeda’s gently and helped ease it off of him.  
  
“If you take advantage of me right now, I will by all means definitely get a boy’s love revenge on you.”  
  
“What kind of revenge is that!”

Oh, he was shouting. He could not shout on his own he could barely raise his voice over its usual monotone but somehow around Komaeda it became so easy. As if somebody had thrown a single string down to help draw this thing called self out of him.  
  
His own existence was always drowning, in the beginning he simply let himself sink deeper and deeper and gave no effort in swimming. Now, he swam with everything he had at every moment, an exhausting, desperate struggle in which he never gained any ground at all. He wondered for a moment, if Komaeda were to disappear, would this current self simply give up treading water and start to drown again.

No, it wasn’t as simple as that. People humanized each other, but in the end he only had himself. He had Hinata Hajime, Nameless Test Subject, Izuru Kamukura, Hinata Hajime, all of them had been buried at sea for the sake of this current incarnation who was trying… struggling to learn how to swim.  
  
People humanized each other, but becoming human required looking at yourself as well. For Hinata that just happened to be a more complicated process because as he tried to stare in the water, every time it changed he saw a slightly different boy looking back at him from his reflection. And that was enough self reflection, Nagito was bleeding to death after all. He unbuttoned the stained red undershirt and finally got to start dressing the wound.  
  
“Amazing, you haven’t even flinched once. I thought I would have to numb you or apply unaesthetic.”  
  
“To have any part of me praised by the world’s hope, I’m so so honored.” It was difficult to tell when Komaeda was being sarcastic or not, for the opposite reason of Kamukura, his voice was so pitchy and always changing tones he rarely strung one tone to the next fluently or coherently, in another way he was always changing from one moment to the next. “I suffer much worse pain all the time, so I’ve gotten into the habit of hiding it. If you do something enough you might become decent on it, though such deception could never be called talent.”  
  
Komaeda was making light again, but Izuru had to struggle to keep his fingers steady. Suddenly things became unbelievably heavy. This was the heaviness of another human being he was feeling, against his own hollow self. Why did Komaeda think any part of him was strong again.  
  
Suddenly, Komaeda reached forward and poked his chest. “Muscles. I wonder if you have to work out to maintain these, or if they’re merely a side effect of the surgery. Something like no matter what your metabolism will always keep your body in the peak physical condition of a human being.”  
  
He spread his palm flat against Hinata’s abs and rubbed up and downward, getting the feel for the whole of it. “They’re not just strong, they’re flexible as well. There’s not too much mass so as to become obstructive.”  
  
“Do you study muscles or something?”  
  
“The correct term would be myology, or perhaps kinesiology. But no, I just remember in dragon ball Trunks acquired too much muscle mass in his super saiyan ascend form and therefore lost because he was too strong, not because he was not strong enough.”  
  
“Amazing, Komaeda’s in front of me but if I close my eyes it’s like I’m talking to Kumagawa-senpai.”  
  
“Way to kill the mood by bringing up his name.”  
  
“There is no mood! I am sewing up your bullet wound!” Izuru snapped at him again. Really, using all of these exclamation points was getting tiresome. As Komaeda’s hands traveled up until they reached his chest, Izuru spoke absentmindedly. “You seem to know what you’re doing. Have you ever felt up a guy’s chest before?”  
  
“Eh… eh-eh-eh-eh? N-no, no one besides Hinata-kun.” His hair fell in front of his face, obscuring one of his eyes and his blushing cheeks. It was nice seeing a bit of color on his colorless, washed out body. “My hands would just have defiled their bodies. It’s sacred territory you know?”  
  
“You don’t have to be like that. I was just asking if you’d ever had a boyfriend before me. It’s a pretty normal question all things considered.”  
  
“Normal things are wasted on me, Hinata-kun.”  
  
“No they’re not.” Hard disagree. Izuru turned around and looked before deciding to just ask. “Do you have any painkillers in your bag.”  
  
“Yeah, I should have some left from the last prescription.”  
  
As he went searching, Izuru saw the bag behind where Komaeda was sitting. He bent over to grab it, and noticed Komaeda was not so subtly staring at him. The boy was both subtle and unsubtle, subtle when he wanted to be and subtle when he did not want to be, unsubtle when he wanted to be and unsubtle when he did not want to be. And currently, he was staring intensely at the muscles on Izuru’s back. As he straightened up again Izuru leaned over his shoulder and blew right under his ear.  
  
Komaeda and Kumagawa had the same sensitive spot. How was that for foiling. I was dying to know Kumagawa’s weak spots, said no one ever. You can thank me the narrator.

“Did you find something interesting? I hope you’ll show it to me, because I become ever so bored so easily.”  
  
The moment Kamukura whispered into his ear, Komaeda straightened up like his entire spine became ice in an instant. Izuru wondered if he would ever regain enough of his emotions to giggle at such a sight, because he really, really wanted to. He wandered over to the table and placed the medicine bag back down again. Distracted as he was though he fumbled and watched the contents spill out.  
  
Several medicine bottles, several needles, of varying kinds, sizes, and functions all spilled out at once. Even Izuru was caught off guard for a moment. He knew of course the volume of medication that Komaeda had been taking ever since his treatment had resumed. He had even gone over his documents with Hitoyoshi Hitomi and prescribed some of it, and yet the sight of it all at once, hidden in his bag probably because Komaeda did not want anyone else to see made him freeze for a moment.  
  
He wanted to tremble, or start crying in sympathy but he could not. The only thing he was good at was standing still. He must have been made out of stone. He had no idea why Komaeda would ever put his hands on someone like him, it would be like putting your hands on a statue.

“It’s not a big deal, I’m in remission you know.”  
  
At that moment Izuru moved faster than Komaeda ould see with his eyes. Suddenly his hand was in Komaeda’s hair, feeling the back of his head, tugging him back, his face was centimeters away from Komaeda’s and he seemed to be staring at his lips.  
  
Komaeda closed his eyes, but nothing happened.

“You’ve been coughing up blood again, haven’t you?”  
  
“...”  
  
“You can’t get upset when I don’t notice things that you hide from me, but also get upset when I take extra care to notice them.”  
  
“I can, in fact do that. I’m a terrible child so I can act as contradictory and bratty as I want.”  
  
“Then stop being such a child.”  
  
“I’m probably never going to grow up you know.”  
  
He did not mean in a psychological sense, but that too. Rather by the time he reached the age most considered crossing the barrier from young adult to adult, Komaeda Nagito would already be dead. That tended to happen to those diagnosed with extremely rare and terminal kinds of cancer.  
  
Every feature of Izuru’s face was still, hearing those words did not change his expression at all, but his irises were shaking as they tried to focus on Komaeda.  
  
“I’m sorry, I said something terrible and now you’re showing me such a face. I’m insufferable, aren’t I?”  
  
“Even so I’ll suffer you.”  
  
“Don’t wanna.”  
  
“I’m not giving you a choice.”  
  
“My, my, how forceful. Well it should be fine, I have such good luck you know.” Komaeda said as he swallowed the pills that Kamukura had given him. In a moment they disappeared from his hand and down his throat, a magic trick befitting a magician like him.  
  
Izuru had already turned away. Even though he was so strong and with so many muscles, apparently he could not look at the other boy as he said this. “It’s not about luck. The body is merely a sequence of predictable chemical reactions. Everything that’s happening to you can be explained that way, that’s why… I will be able to figure it out. Everything, everything in this world comes down to predictable math for me.”  
  
That was why he had accepted this body that felt more like a prison. He could be more useful like this, so why… why the one problem he wanted to figure out more than anything else, why was that eluding him so much when everything else instantly surrendered itself before his eyes.

“You know, no matter what happened in that game you never made it to the final round.”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“In every scenario I witnessed you didn’t make it to the end of the story. I think it’s because you didn’t deserve to make it that far but this time, this time you will.”

  
“...”  
  
“I… I will… I will for sure…”  
  
“Don’t worry Hinata-kun.” Komaeda said softly as he put his hand on the other boy’s back. “I’m not taunting at all, nor am I worshipping you when I say this. It’s what I believe from the bottom of my heart. It’s that thing we call hope. Hinata Hajime-kun is the strongest in the whole world.”  
  
“Don’t you mean Kamukura?”  
  
“...Even when you’re weak you’re strong, even when you’re stupid you’re brilliant, I know my faith is a worthless thing to have but you have it. I believe in you. I’m not scared at all because you’re here.”

  
“How do you know I’m strong?”  
  
“Because you have so many handsome muscles of course! If you’re going to start saying things like ‘I’ll protect you’ will you walk around with your shirt off more often, and carry me like a princess?”  
  
Because you’re here.  
Those were the words that Hinata failed to hear.  
He could not hear them, because one of his feet was still on that island.  
Because “You” was a subjective term when it came to him.  
If only he had heard it, he might have thought differently. He might have understood what Komaeda wanted. Then again Komaeda barely understood himself so there was probably no hope on that front to begin with.  
  
No hope.  
  
“It doesn’t matter if he’s artificially strong like you are, if you’re a prototype and he’s a finished product. Next time, nex time, nex time for sure, things will work out, things will go better than you expect, you have an infinite amount of next times that’s the thing you call hope.”  
  
Unlike me.  
Who has a set amount of next times.  
Komaeda wanted to say.  
But he decided to be tactful at least once in his life.  
  
“Damnit, I’m the one who's supposed to be comforting you.”  
  
“You’re right. Making me comfort you when I’m the one who has a bullet wound, you sure are useless Hinata-kun, not to mention insensitive.”

Komaeda said, and he laughed even though the resulting shaking tugged at his stitches and threatened to rupture his organs.  
  
“You’re double insensitive, you didn’t even try to take advantage of me.”  
  
“You told me not too!”  
  
“Gosh, you’re so difficult to navigate when you’re like this, flipping between your tsun and dere sides.”  
  
“Quit making fun of me you clown.”  
  
“Oh, but you’re a clown too HInata-kun. You always give me my smile, my Mr. Clown.” Komaeda showed him that smile. However despite that and a wink in his eye, trying to make it as humanly possible to the point of straining himself that he was just flirting it went over Hinata's head.  
  
“Oh, really what kind of clown am I?” Yep. That was the important part of the sentence. That super high school level analysis definitely did not go to waste on Hinata, nor did all of my precious labors as a brain surgeon.   
  
“Big, tall and... just sits there never saying anything. Never playing along. Just like a mime." Komaeda said, retracting his smile as he pouted.   
  
“Hey, hey why do I get stuck with the single lamest kind of clown?”  
Hinata still did not get it.  
Perhaps he never would. 

😈

  
  
As for Shinraui Hansode, even with the analysis techniques of the ultimate Neurologist I could not tell you where her true thoughts lie. So, for this next scene simply imagine that tiny, cute, Shiranui is a muppet being puppeteered around interacting with her flesh and blood friends. Her real boy and real girl friends.  
  
Even Shiranui herself might not know exactly whose hand is up at her ass this moment, controlling her actions.

That metaphor sounded a lot more beautiful and poetic in my head before it came out my foul mouth.

Kurokami Medaka had given up terrorizing the school for the day and instead was laying in a pile of books. Actually if Fukawa Toko were here she would get angry at me for calling them books when they were in fact manga volumes. All of them from shonen jump. Medaka read so fast that she could scan through one in about a minute, and she tended to be inconsiderate when it came to others. Like that kind of child who threw things on the floor naturally because they expected without thinking that a butler would come pick it up. Spoiled brat.  
  
“Jeez the princess is making a mess again. How inconsiderate for others.” Shiranui said, appearing behind from nowhere. She was probably the only person on earth who could catch Medaka off guard like that, but that probably had to do with how tiny her feet were. Cute. Like a little kitten’s. No Matsuda don’t get distracted.  
  
“You’re the inconsiderate one, always showing up as you please doing as you please, Shiranui.” That nice girl did not even bother to hide the disdain in her voice. She picked up another manga volume and held it in front of her face so the other would not see.  
  
“What are yu jealous or something? It’s funny a girl with big boobs like you getting jealous over little old me. So funny I could just laugh. Ahya-hya-hya.” Shiranui tip toed around and picked one of the manga volumes up. “I didn’t know you were into manga, aren’t they a little too dumb for a genius like you?”  
  
“Kumagawa always reads manga, right? Perhaps they’re key to understanding his heart.”  
  
“His heart? Oh, oh, what kind of scandal have I stumbled upon. You’re enaged aren’t you?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just saying Kumagawa won’t play with me any more. He was always the most fun to fight you know, Kamukura and Zenkichi were both pretty fun too but I never laughed as much as I did with Kumagawa.”  
  
“Weren’t you just laughing at him? You know because his whole existence is a joke?”

“No, no, I was definitely laughing with him. It’s just ever since he started playing with Junko instead, it’s like he’s gone to some far off place. I think he’s avoiding me.” Medaka laid back down rolling over like an upset lioness. Apparently even Kurokami Medaka was capable of pouting.  
  
The normally silly Shiranui looked seriously at her for a moment. “You know, I guess you don’t get it because nobody explained it to you, so I’ll explain it. It’s not like you’ve ever had to study on your own. Kumagawa-senpai is trying hard to commit seriously to one girl, so he can’t just go around flirting with girls all day like it’s a harem series.”  
  
“Flirting? How can that be seen as flirting? How does one flirt exactly? Is punching involved? Is that where I'm getting confused?"  
  
“You’re engaged, you know.”

“Yes.”  
  
“And Kumagawa-senpai has a steady girlfriend.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And Kumagawa-senpai had feelings for you in the past. Therefore it’s awkward.”  
  
Kurokami Medaka probably had not felt the emotion known as ‘awkward’ once in her entire life.’Awkward’ was a word that only belonged to human beings. Now that she was discovering her human heart, she had an awkward first time feeling. She scratched at the back of her head the way Zenkichi always seemed to do, but she was not imitating him this time. She had just done it without thinking. “Kumagawa-senpai had feelings for me of all people??? But that might get in the way of our friendship.”  
  
“No it won’t. He confessed to you and you rejected him in front of the whole school. Wait, why am I even recapping the plot to you you were in these scenes!”  
  
“Shiranui I feel like smething dangerous is happening you’re not supposed to be straight manning me.”  
  
“You’re not even supposed to know what straight manning is!” Shiranui snapped at her, and then took a moment to collect her breath. “Jeez, you sure have changed a lot lately.”  
  
“You think so?”  
  
“Well I have to watch you whether I want to or not. You’re such an attention hog after all.” Shiranui turned away, folding her hands behind her back and swinging them as she went. Even though her voice was different ti did not match, every movement of her body was carefree, the carefree dancing of a puppet on strings. “Either way you might not understand this princess, because you’re used to getting love poured on you but Kumagawa-senpai is trying seriously to love one person. You shouldn’t get in the way just because you’re not used to not getting exactly what you want from somebody the moment you want it.”  
  
What a negative view on her character. To Shiranui, one spoiled and entitled princess must have been exactly the same as the other. Whether they fell in love with a prince like Zenkichi and Matsuda, or a pauper like Kumagawa a princess was still a princess. Those are just my own assumptions about her thoughts though it’s not like she had an understanding of whatever she was that she was feeling in that exact moment.  
  
Except that it was negative.  
Her minus feelings towards Kurokami Medaka.  
  
“It’s not that. I don’t want to make demands of Kumagawa-kun or anything, but does growing up necessarily mean having to leave all your childhood friends behind? Not getting to play with them anymore?”  
  
Kurokami Medaka was sincere.  
  
That sincerity only made Shiranui more minus. “You’re the one who rejected him. Do you even know what growing up is?”  
  
“Well when I finish my high school days I’ll become the president of the Kurokami Foundation at age eighteen, then my life will belong to them and I’ll most likely become the greatest president in Kurokami history.”  
  
“As expected of her highness.”  
  
“But before that, I wanted to go to high school normally and grow up normally. I thought i was natural I would have to give up all of those things the moment I turned eighteen, that my life would stop belonging to myself but is that the same for everybody else?”  
  
Shiranui tilted her head to one side, her antenna bobbed as she did. “I don’t know. I’m the wrong person to ask about that.”  
  
Before Kurokami could clarify what she meant. Not that that would have resulted in anything. Shiranui likely would not be able to explain what the words leaving her mouth meant after she had said them. It was like death of the author. The author was dead, only the other person on the other side of the conversation was left to interpret the words she had strung together.  
  
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi walked in and took Shiranui’s attention away. “Aaaah! Sorry Medaka-chan I walked in here on accident, I’ll just stay on the other side of the rom. I won’t make eye cntact that’d be indecent.”  
  
She skipped over to play with him. Shiranui had a nickname of the world’s worst best friend. Whenever she felt like it she would gosip behind Zenkichi’s back. Any secret she promised to keep, the whole school would know about it the next day. When he had fallen down and looked like he would die on the spot of embarrassment if anybody laughed, she laughed at him rather than offering a hand up.  
  
At this mment though, Kurokami Medaka noticed. As Shiranui ran over to interact with Zenkichi there was no distance between them at all. Even considering the height difference. “Awe look somebody’s getting all sulky because he can’t spend time with Medaka-chan.”  
  
“I ain’t sulking. I’m a perfect gentleman.”  
  
“It’s true, but it’s weird you guys aren’t even at the hand holding stage. I mean haven’t you kissed in the past?”  
  
“Medaka-chan’s kissed pretty much everyone. Those things mean nothing to her.”  
  
“And yet she won’t let you have any. Poor Zenkichi, you just have the worst luck don’t you? You’re even unluckier than Kumagawa-senpai right now.”  
  
“Don’t rub it in!”  
  
“Rub, rub, rub, rub.”  
  
“I said no rubbing!”

Even though Zenkichi sounded annoyed, he was smiling like he had the time of his life. Medaka wondered if she had ever made Zenkichi smile like that. Even though it was her own self imposed rules keeping them apart…  
  
Self imposed…  
Ah, isn’t that right? The only reason they were apart was because of her.  
It was just like Shiranui had said, She rejected Kumagawa and then got upset when he avoided her because things were awkward, because she couldn’t see things were awkward. Shiranui sure did understand people well.  
  
What was that Kaiki, her new uncle had said to her. _You dislike Shiranui because of the way that you’re similar. A doppelganger, a mythological creature that kills you and replaces you, you hate it on sight._ Something like that, Medaka had not been listening entirely she had been staring at the meat.  
  
She wondered what it would be like if she was in the middle of that happy scene beteween friends, instead of watching alone from the side. She was greedy indeed, a greedy girl with a bottomless stomach that could devour anything.  
  
She would do it in the kindest of ways too, with the happiest of smiles, the complete opposite of Enoshima Junko’s greed. Greed was probably still greed though, and terrifying women were probably still terrifying women.  
  
Words of wisdom from me, a spineless coward.

😈

 

“Huh, if it isn’t Naegi-senpai?”  
  
Makoto had just been heading to find Kurokami Medaka. Enough time had passed that he got a message from Gaen where she wanted to meet. Makoto was used to never being able to go and directly accomplish what he wanted to without interruption though, somehow, always, there was usually a fateful encounter on the way.  
  
Makoto turned his head and saw Shuichi waving at him from across the garden that separated them.  
  
“Oh… Saihara-kun. Are you going to class?”  
  
“Going to class? Well… No. It’s weird though, seeing the esteemed student council president skipping class. But I guess we did promise to meet here.”

“Eh…?”  
  
“Nothing less from you, Naegi-senpai. You’re so kind, treating your underclassmen like this, showing up whenever they need you too, valuing them more than yourself.” Then Shuichi said, in a hushed whisper. His sleeve was pulled over his face as if to cover his mouth. “You fool…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You know like Tarot’s the fool. Don’t you get symbolism at all, Naegi-senpai?” Shuichi crossed the garden that was separating them. He did not seem to care at all about the white flowers that he was stepping on, he hardly even noticed them. “The fool is the card to that starts out the journey, he’s like a blank slate he is thrown haplessly into a journey of self realization.”  
  
Even amongst the flowers there were still a few red ones in blom.   
  
“Haplessly?”

Makoto tried to form words, but all he could do was echo. He suddenly became conscious of so many things, things he did not even think about. Such as the fact that people were all around them. That some of those people might not like him. That they all had two eyes that could stare at him with those feelings. That they would watch him, watch him, watch him, watch him.   
  
Scrutinized as he was. He could do nothing but fidget. He could not even show them something worthy. There was nothing inside of him to be seen so why were they all looking at him? How had he gone his entire life without noticing these. It was like a thousand different little details he had ignored at once. Ignorant, ignorant, ignorant.   
  
“Yes, haplessly, and even helplessly.” Shuichi folded his hands behind his back, there was a certain energy and bob in his step that his usual self was completely lacking. The boy who always followed around in Kirigiri’s shadow, it was strange to see him talk so much. “Naegi-senpai is such a kind upperclassmen, he cares about others more than himself, that’s why he made a promise to take me to eat non-revolving sushi.”  
  
“Whoa, that’s a lot of money. Do I look as brilliant, handsome, or bright as Togami to you?” Makoto immediately imagined the prince sitting on his throne, looking down on him, his one and only best friend.   
  
“What is with you and Togami…”  
  
“He’s blindingly bright.” Burning bright like the stars, that was true friendship.   
  
“You have a blind spot…” Shuichi repeated again. “Wait, did you forget? That’s out of character for you.”  
  
Makoto suddenly bowed his head down. He was humble as always or perhaps he wanted to avoid the gazes that were concentrating on him. Strange, he had never thought before this point that he was somebody anybody in the world would care about. He thought he would never be noticed as he was a perfect face that blended into the crowd. Suddenly though he became aware of himself, and it only seemed natural they they would see him. They would see every detail of him. Those eyes would violate him again and again. They had to care. They must care. They must be looking. He kept his head down. “I don’t remember making such a promise I’m sorry. It’s not that you’re not important to me, it’s just I had something I needed to do right now… there was something I needed… I was needed…”  
  
Shuichi tilted his head pulling his hat to cover one eye. Makoto wondered if he had ever seen the boy smile like that, so broadly. “My, what is that handsome-sounding line for? Saying such a handsome sounding line while breaking a promise. You’re needed… who is it that needs you did you make a date with Ikusaba-senpai?”

“Er… even if that was that’d be kind of embarrassing to tell you about.” Makoto too wondered how he had always become so loose lipped around Shuichi. He thought Shuichi was an awkward boy like himself, and because of that it was hard for them to speak honestly with each other.It's not like he was sharing his feelings, it was more like, the sensation of having swallowed a snake, and having it slowly crawl back up your esophagus while you spit it up.   
  
At that moment, Shuichi drifted closer and closer, and then brushed a finger across Makoto’s pulled tight lips.  
  
Immediately the boy seized up, if he had a hedgehog's quills he would flare them. He stumbled backwards almost falling. "What are you...?"   
  
“Well I tried to open the zipper on your mouth. Do tell me a bit more about this please. You and Kirigiri-senpai have done so much for me, so I really wanted to help you in any way I could. The fool needs to be helped along the fool’s journey after all.”  
  
“What?”  
Makoto said again. Everyone needed to stop using so many literary terms around him, he only read books and manga that were popular. He did not think about why he liked them so much, and when most people lost interest in them he lost interest as well. 

That was right that was why this was happening. He liked the things he liked without thinking about it. He was uncritical as a reader. He was lacking in critical thinking. That was what was called a fool, no?  
  
“I don’t think you need to worry I mean you won her over so quickly didn’t you? Amazing speed. Such rapid progress. Even me whose useless unless he has others around him to depend on doesn’t get close to others that fast.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re useless, Saihara-kun.” He was speaking so quickly Makoto could only catch the insults that Saihara haphazardly lobbed at himself.  
  
"You don't know me that's all. If you knew me, you'd see me as a parasite."  
  
"A parasite?" Makoto repeated again.   
  
"Unable to do anything for himself, to feel anything for himself, I cling to others. Even with Kirigiri-senpai... I'm a big fan of hers, but I think I just want to be special t someone I think so much of." Then the the moment of honesty ended. Shuichi was smiling again his lips pulled tight as if he did not want anything leaking out either.“That's enough about me, if I was a main character I'd be the worst main character ever of a story nobody likes. That's why I want to help you guys so badly. As you’re fully aware, I’m very adept at listening to others. Since my own voice is so worthless.” Shuichi finally turned around on his shoe and went to look back at Makoto. The two of them were standing with their toes cenitmeters apart, Shuichi staring into his eyes. Even so Makoto could not make out Shuichi’s eyes, that hat was in the way. “I mean you two have already come so far, right?”  
  
Makoto could see SHuichi was speaking in front of him, yet he got the feeling that instead his shadow was talking to him from behind, projected on the brick school building wall the two of them were standing in front of.  
  
Yet at the same time he did not feel the urge to run away. All he unnerving feelings that were bottled up inside of him he wanted them to be let out. He wanted somebdy to care about these feelings, to not just be a member of the crowd. He wanted them to escape so he could make sense of them. He was a senseless fool there was no way he would understand them on his own. In that case, Peter Pan should sit quietly and patiently as his shadow was sewn back to his feet, stitch by stitch on his toes.  
  
Naegi Makoto smiled, an open and innocent smile. The smile of a an empty fool without guidance. “Then, Sahara-kun I request that you do.”  
  
“Yes, it’s been requested of me. Let’s see, in the original scenario. You caught Ikusaba-senpai’s eye, the distant girl who was off in a separate world that consisted only of her sister. You were the first one to take notice of her. Then, you saved her. Ah, wait that didn’t happen. She was always looking at you, she was enchanted by your smile but you didn’t notice. The fool you are, the entire world already ended before you took notice, and by that time you had already forgotten about her. Yes, in a world where Kumagawa-senpai did not transfer to this academy, Ikusaba Mukuro gets noticed by no one, gets saved by no one, she dies a grisly death on national television betrayed by the only person who showed her a tiny fragment of love. You just watched. So did everybody else. They thought ‘she deserved it the blood of the whole world is on her hands’, no, you probably thought the same thing too as you watched.”  
  
“S-she didn’t ask for my help.” Makoto said. He did not want to think about how one misstep could lead to a completely different scenario. The person he loved so much now could have meant nothing to him, he could have even hated her and saw her as no different from Enoshima Junko.   
  
That was why he never wanted to make that mistake again. That was why he wanted to understand everyone around him. Everyone, absolutely everyone in the whole world. They must have had some point where they wished for happiness. They must have been normal people like him who smiled and looked forward to the future.  
  
Everyone except Enoshima Junko of course.   
  
“Just because she didn’t ask for help it doesn’t mean she didn’t want help. Similiar, jus because she never said she loves you, it doens’t mean she doesn’t. Everyone has things they can’t say even when they want to, don’t they, Naegi-senpai? I thought you were supposed to be the empathy boy, but do you just wait for others to come to you?”

Even so, when he thought his reserve was so firm in front of that boy getting closer and closer his legs felt weak, and he felt like he might sink at this spot. A shadow seemed so thin that it was transparent, and most people walked around without even noticing them but once you looked they were heavier than anything else?  
  
Gravity? Gravity? Hahaha.   
No it was the weight of the shadow that kept you tied to the ground. Unable to defend himself, unable to move, Makoto got heavier and heavier.   
  
When it became his turn to talk, he said nothing special at all. He was nothing more than a perspective character. He just asked the same dumb questions that any normal person would ask. 

“H-how do you know about any of that?”  
  
“I don’t know anything.” Shuichi’s tongue flicked back and forth, like he was casting a spell with that phrase he had started to repeat recently. “You’re the one who knows. Didn’t Kumagawa-senpai tell you, about the world that he erased.”  
  
“Yeah, he told me but… that’s such a terrible scene.”

“Well it’s fine, because Kumagawa-senpai transferred in you don’t have to think about that. That’s just convenient for you isn’t it? Because Kumagawa-senpai got beaten up in my place, Ikusaba-senpai calmed down and came to talk to me. Because Kumagawa-senpai opened up about his painful past, Ikusaba-senpai began to move on from seeing Junko as her only world and stepped into my world. Because Kumagawa-senpai told Ikusaba-senpai not to run away, she confessed to me.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“It’s not like you did a single thing. All you had to do was smile at her, and be kind to her for the first time. It was effortless she probably would have fallen in love with anybody who showed her that love, and there was a timeline where you didn’t even bother to do those small things for her..”  
  
“She…”  
  
“All the dangerous parts of her you ignored because you didn’t have to deal with them, because Kumagawa-senpai did in your place. Now, you can take pity on that pitiable side of her and ignore all the uncomfortable parts. That’s how good of a person you are senpai, I’m esteemed to have such a senpai.”

“So, you’re calling me helpless?” Makoto said, denying that word even though it was exactly what he felt in this situation. He was not helpless. There were others around him. They would help him because they were friends. But...  
  
Requiring that help in the first place? Wasn't that what being helpless was?   
  
“No, no, that’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how the fool’s journey is supposed to go. They can’t take a single step on their own, they need their hands held, they need to be guded.”  
  
“Saihara-kun, I like you as a friend and I really want you to get along with Kirigiri-senpai so she can have more friends too but… Since when did you… It’s hard to put a word to it, it’s like you’re always…”  
  
At his feet.  
He was being followed around.  
Stalked.  
Kirigiri must not have even noticed it. Talented people felt it was natural for them to be observed, to be admired, but Makoto did not feel like he had that much depth. He had always thought himself shallow. He did not think somebody could ever think that much of him.  
  
But Shuichi proved it, and it was a feeling like having the back of his head grabbed and forced underneath the water.   
  
“I think you’re trying to help out in your own way, but I don’t think my life is as interesting as you’re making it out to be. Mukuro is just a normal girl. She’s going to spend the rest of her life living day to day with what she did. Thank you for listening but… I should be the one helping you. I shouldn’t rope an underclassmen to this.”  
  
“No, no, no, no…” Shuichi lifted his hat. “Don’t be modest with me in such a strange manner, Naegi-senpai. “I would be more hurt at that.”  
  
“I don’t want to hurt anybody.”  
The wish he held deep in his heart, but was that just a fool's wish? 

“Of course you don’t, you don’t want to do anything. You were happy being called normal, weren’t you? Even that boy Hinata-senpai, at least he had ambition.”  
  
“Why are you saying all this all of a sudden? You’re worrying me, Saihara-kun. Did I make you upset?"  
  
“Please don’t worry about me at all. I don’t mind at all. In fact I prefer it if you don’t even look at me.” He looked like he was trying to hide in plain sight. No matter what angle you looked at him from, he Shuichi looked like he was trying to shirk away. To shrink into the shadows.”It’s more like being told something so distant at this point is hocking. It’s like disappointing.”  
  
Then suddenly, the gap between them was closed in an instant. A shadow lie over Shuichi’s face, and a shadow lie over Makoto’s face. They were practically overlapped. Shuichi’s nose bumped against his. He was staring directly into the eyes that seemed to terrify him so much. “We have that kind of relationship between us, Naegi-senpai.”  
  
“What kind of relationship do you and Makoto have, huh?”  
  
Speak of the devil and in she walks. She was only the devil’s younger sister though. Before Shuichi could take another step, Mukuro had come in between them and locked her arm around Makot’s. “Makoto, tell me, when we first met. Due to a trivial blunder I made, you saw what was happening between MIsogi-chan and I, and then… on that day… On that very same day. You came to speak to me.”  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro, the wolf who had been beaten until she begged like a dog. Her eyes looked like she was about to go to war. Makoto simply shivered against her, he loked unaware like he had no idea what was going on.

He wanted to help them out.  
He wanted the tensions to be eased between them.  
He wanted them to get along.  
He knew something was off about Shuichi’s behavior but he did not want to confront him.  
He did not want to do anything that could lead to the other being hurt.  
Someone like that who feels others pain as their own.  
Empathic to the point of bleeding. Even if you could not understand the feeling of others, you could still tell when they were hurting, you could still imagine what it would be like if you were in that much pain.  
  
“Frankly speaking, it was hard for me to take in the ‘Meaning” behind that action of yours.I mean isn’t ithat normally the case? There isn’t anything beneficial Makoto would gain from risking anything from me is there? Or rather, even if you save a girl who has hurt others in the past, there sill isn’t a single benefit and yet you said such words to me.”  
  
She saw the hands of her sister reaching forward to grab both sides of her face. Slowly, ever so slowly her sister’s nails dug underneath her lips, felt the redness of her gums, pulled her mouth into strange shapes and then sewed her lips shut together.  Her sister’s hands would cover her eyes too, her ears, until there was nothing left. Even if things had changed between her sister and her, ever so slightly that was the history between them.  
  
She could not see a thing, she could not say a thing, she could not hear a thing, ot unless her sister wanted her to. Then she saw a single point of light that did not belong to her sister. A boy smiled at her expecting nothing at all in return.  
  
“Could it be that… You helped me… ‘Because you noticed it was me?’ The person I love, the first person to smile at me, had finally taken notice of e and was helping me in return. That was what I thought, I was noticed from the crowd, I was found.” As she said this, her fingers traced delicately on her flat chest where her heart was supposed to be. Mukuro’s smile was so slight, only Makoto could have noticed it in that moment as he stared at her lips. “However, that wasn’t the case. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Simply put,  you’re a selfless idiot that will help anyone aren’t you?”

“Aren’t you just agreeing with Saihara-kun? I thught you showed up to defend me, jeez! And… I mean I guess I didn’t really help you… yeah, that’s exaggerating it. I didn’t even really fight for you like Kuagawa did. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and know the right people so.”  
  
“I wonder about that. Even if we weren’t classmates, even if you didn’t meet Kumagawa, as long as you were made aware wouldn’t you probably do the same thing?”  
  
“What are you basing this on.”  
  
“The intimate secrets you shared with me about yourself."  
  
“What did that bastard tell you!” Makoto said, putting his hands into his pockes, and looking off standoffishly. "He can't be trusted, what does he know!"   
  
“At the very least, I don’t think I’d have started a conversation, with a girl who never spoke to anybody in the class and ignored the whole world. Even if I was a normal girl, even if I had a normal younger sister who spoiled me and made me happy, no if I was happy I'd definitely overlook that kind of person.”  
  
“Eh? Is that so?”

“When you’re alone for a long period of time, you begin to think that you are the special one, don’t you think so? It’s true that when you’re all by yourself you don’t become the majority. But… it’s just that you can’t become them. No matter how hard she tries, my sister can’t feel the same way normal people do. How laughable.”

 _No matter what._ _  
_ _She would never enjoy her normal school life._ _  
_ _That’s why I wanted to see her smile._ _  
_ _I wanted it so badly I forgot about myself. Talking to you made me remember a little._

“I had other people who knew about me. There was Matsuda-kun, and Misogi-chan, but among them, the only person who’s similar to Makoto is just you. That’s why… Even when I was apart from you I had a lot of delusions about you. That entire game.”  
_  
_ _“_ What kind of delusions!?”  
Makoto suddenly could feel his entire body creaking under the weight of Mukuro’s thoughtfulness towards him.  
  
“I had to watch my sister get all lovey dovey while I was alone, so I had an exceptionally productive few weeks.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Even if the reality is a tiny bit different, from all those delusions I had about you. There’s something I want to say.”  
  
“Eh…?”  
  
“I.”  
  
“...?”  
  
“Love.”  
  
“...!”

“You.”  
  
I love you.  
  
As she said that she pointed directly at his chest.  
Makoto felt like he had been shot in the heart. That would be romantic nonsense if he did not know Mukuro was capable of shooting him with pinpoint accuracy if she really wanted to.   
  
Her voice was completely deadpan and yet he found himself drowning in how much overflowing emotion those words contained. The flowers they were surrounded by, the butterflies passing through them, the chatter of students in the background going about their days completely oblivious to the love scene being played out in front of them, the colors around them, the colors in the sky, the light of the sun, all of those things were irrelevant. They were washed away as feelings flooded into him.  
  
Shuichi merely watched in the background, he clapped his hands together. “...Congratulations.”

I love you.

The words Shuichi said did not even reach him.  
Saihara pulled his cap so far over his face his entire face became covered in shadow. “I hope you two have fun talking to Gaen-senpai, I wonder what she’ll think when she sees that her niece is far past her prime.”  
  
I love you.  
  
There was someone who saw him as special. As not another face in the crowd. It made him want to live up to those feelings. It was probably more complicated than that but he was a simple minded fool.  
  
She had chosen him. That was it, that was the difference. He had special feelings for Kirigiri and Sayaka too, he could easily see himself dating either one of them but neither of them made a move. Perhaps that was not the kind of sweep it off you feet reason to fall in love, but that was the difference.  
  
After that day where they had first met. Ikusaba and him had talked about all kinds of things, over and over. Special things shared only between them. Perhaps there was something dramatic about confessing like they had, perhaps Ikusaba had extraordinary circumstances but even so the actual hard work of the relationship.  
  
Came in talking over and over again.  
Until he had come to learn just about every sin she had committed.  
Simply because he wanted to carry that burden with her.  
  
_I want to protect Mukuro?_ _  
_ _No it’s more like, I’m hiding what she did because if she gets punished then I’ll be punished to as an accomplice._ _  
_ _I know she did a lot of things wrong but… there was once a person named Ikusaba Mukuro._ _  
_ _A girl who loved her sister who meant the world to her._ _  
_ _Even if it was all soured at that point._ _  
_ _That girl wished to be happy. That little girl had hope for the future at one point._

The next time he saw Shuichi, he would try to explain it like hat. He would try to put it into words. He had no idea why being around the other boy seemed to fluster him so much.  
  
He scratched at his cheek as he looked at Mukuro. “Ahaha, what was that just now? You were getting all gushy in public are you trying to embarrass me? I feel like I’m always a few steps behind these days.”  
  
“I was defending my territory.” As she said that, Mukuro stepped in between him and bit him on the ear. Three way foiling. “Growl.”  
  
“I see the furry thing is a shared trait between twin sisters.”  
  
“I guess. Is your sibling also cute and fun sized like you?”  
  
“Hey, hey you were just insulting me right now don’t disguise it as a compliment! I can tell even when your voice is all monotone.”  
  
“I said that with a lot of emotion. I layered all of my affection in it.”

“It sounded exactly the same as always!”  
  
“I like how short you are. It’s cute when you have to stand up on your toes to kiss me.”  
  
“Hey you should meet my sister some time.”  
  
Makoto said as the two of them started to walk off. They were just having a normal conversation. Just one of many. This small bit of normalcy while they went to get the superhuman Kurokami Medaka and introduce her to Gaen Izuko who knew everything apparently, and then afterwards they would go home, go to sleep, wake up, go to school, save the world rinse and repeat.  
  
An eventful life, a life where the extraordinary and the ordinary could easily get confused. As they walked arm in arm, Mukuro somehow clinging to Makoto’s arm even though he was the shorter one.  
  
“I don’t think that’s the best idea. I don’t have the best track record with younger sisters.” Mukuros voice fell to a harsh whisper. “She would probably hate me.”  
  
“Well of course she’ll hate you. You’re the first girl that ever stole her precious older brother from her.”  
  
“So you didn’t date anybody else before me? Surprising but good to know.” Mukuro said, muttering to herself as if she was taking mental notes and sizing up potential enemies. Even love could be a battlefield after all.   
  
“How is that surprising?”  
  
“You’re so handsome and so kind. You could easily become a playboy if you wanted to.”  
  
“What kind of life do you imagine me living?”  
  
“I don’t know really, I don’t know what having a normal life is like. Misogi-chan is ordinary in every conceivable way except for his trauma, so is it something like that?”  
  
“I don’t know what’s going on with that guy so much so he worries me but no… My sis has had a couple of boyfriends, and she's got tons of normal friends she goes through a best friend like every month, but I’ve never gotten close enough to anybody. I had normal friends, but I didn't get a best friend until I me Togami. He's my first, and so are you my fist girlfriend. That’s why I want to introduce you, you can see what it’s like… that awkward, normal conversation of meeting your boyfriend’s younger sister.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
She was not thinking something naive as _perhaps I’ll gain a new younger sister._ _  
_ Even if she realized the full extent of Junko’s cruelty, for her there would only ever be one younger sister in the world for her. She had two family members already, a younger sister and a younger brother, both of them equally foolish. Any more and the weight might crush the fragile girl and her tiny world.

She did not even get mad at Shuichi for trespassing on her little world. She deserved that, she already knew that the ending where she got stabbed in front of everyone and betrayed by her sister after only experiencing her sister’s cruel love in life was the ending that she deserved. All she could do was try to support Makoto now, and make sure to fight in his place so he could continue to live his normal life. To support his hope. To hope that Makoto could continue helping other people who had fallen to despair, just like her. But even that chance to make up for what she did in the past was more than she deserved.  
  
That girl’s world was ever so small, and she knew it was only inevitable it would crumble, and when it did that to would be what she deserved. Until that point though she would defend it with everything she had. She could never become cute and quiet like a rabbit. She had dug her fangs too deep in too many innocent rabbit’s white fur and stained it bright pink, but she could remain a loyal wolf a least. Until the end. Until she was put out of her misery and die a dog’s death.  
  
Even then, if Makoto would be so kind as to remember her after the fact. If he would remember that at some point there was some good in her, there was a time she looked forward to the future too… no that was just her taking advantage of his kindness.

The self reflection made the trip shorter. When they had finally found Kurokami Medaka though, they stumbled upon a scene that was unexpectedly informal and unceremonious in the tea ceremony club. 

 

😈

 

The moment they opened the door, the tea had been spilled so to speak. Mukuro was not trying to talk in memes like her sister, rather Kurokami and Ajimu had been talking about something and the confrontation boiled to such a point that their tea tray had knocked over  
  
Before their appearance could be noticed, Mukuro grabbed Makoto by the wrist and pulled him outside of the doorframe. They were eavesdropping. “Sssh, my nosy ass sister taught me how to do this.”  
  
“Mukuro, that’s not very polite of us.”  
  
“Sssssh. We just happened to walk in on them on accident, and it’s not like we can leave without Kurokami-san." 

“How interesting.” She said in a playful voice. A woman who could read the mood all too well, versus a girl who could not read the mood at all. Surprisingly it was not Kurokami medaka who had gotten physical. Ajimu Najimi had knocked her onto the floor and now stood over the girl. Ajimu had used Kurokami's head to break the table and now her tea set was a mess. She was not enjoying her high school life to its fullest by participating in the tea ceremony club at this moment. “I’ll admit the courage you show by not taking even one step back while facing me the final boss. Even the new Kurokami Medaka is extraordinary. An amazing existence I’m glad I got to live this long to meet. So I won’t be emotional, as an adult who has lived far too long. I’ll be very tolerant of a brat. If you take back what you said earlier, this can end without a boss fight.”  
  
“Oh, so you’re finally going to fight me.That's exciting, ahhhh I wanted to for so long but I won't. I won’t take it back. I won’t apologize.” Kurokami Medaka’s head had been slammed down so hard the tatami mat cracked and yet she seemed completely unfazed. “I’ll say it again and again. You should go meet him. You should go meet Kumagawa.”  
  
In the background, Makoto stood up and exclaimed. "Are they fighting over Kumagawa-senpai? How come I get called the playboy, Kurokami-san is engaged."   
  
"Do you not know what sneaking is? Gosh if this were a battlefield you'd be dead already." Mukuro said as she grabbed him and pulled him back down by his antennae. "No wonder all those times you followed me, I knew it was you in a second."   
  
“You know, that day when Zenkichi came to the hospital if he had become childhood friends with Kumaawa instead I’m sure Kumagawa would have found happiness. I’ve always thought that it was sad he was never chosen. It’s only natural for people to pick a golden child like myself over Kumagawa so over and over again he’s been passed over, but it’s different for you isn’t it? It’s natural to think I would be your favorite human, I’m the one who saved your life, even Hanten seems to think so but that’s not true. You were the one who chose Kumagawa. You were the one who first acknowledged him not me.”  
  
“I don’t choose, that’s kind of the opposite of my thing. I don't even pick favorites, you and Kumagawa are both the same to me. Both of you are just dust.”   
  
"In spite of all of that, even after living a trillion years you finally managed to have a relationship with someone! Isn't that amazing? You shouldn't disappear without saying goodbye! You should go see him."   
  
She stepped over and grabbed Medaka by her hair this time, yanking her hair up. Ajimu's eyes looked sunken in, a mere imitation of human eyes, the uneasy feeling a broken doll's eyes gave when they were slightly off center. Those inhuman eyes stared at Medaka with genuine disdain. She was looking right at her now. “I’ve been telling you, you’ve misunderstood. I can't feel human emotions, I can't see any human as an individual. It's unnatural." 

Kurokami Medaka even suspended there somehow managed to climb up just enough to shout in the other girl's face. “The feeling of falling in love with someone is natural, too! Don’t deny someone’s feelings of love for you.” After all, in the past Kumagawa had told her those words  _I love you_ and she misunderstood while oh so righteously saying she would bear those feelings for him. Because of that i was awkward apparently. 

Humans had misunderstandings, they caused trouble, they hurt each other without meaning it. They could not accept all of each other. Things did not work out even when both parties wanted them to. She caused trouble for Kumagawa, she separated him from a person he cared about for awhile because his old feelings for her got in the way. She always thought about her feelings first and took them for granted. That was why this time she wanted to learn. To actually learn something. To realize she had failed, make a mistake, and do better.   
  
That was all these overly perfect girls could do for one another. It was not that they were actually perfect, they just had both been looking away from their imperfection.  
  
Even with the other girl in her face Ajimu did not move. She wished she could see Kurokami as a feature of the painted background. The fact that humans insisted on having distinct faces to remember was so annoying. “I’m telling you, I can't feel love or hate for an individual, you romance-brain. "  
  
“It’s not about love and hate. If Kumagawa were here, would you be able to say such a cool and aloof line like that?"  
  
“It’s just like what I told him back then. Because I’m not a human, he would eventually come to hate me, that was why we couldn’t stay together. The imaginary and the real can't coexist. Humans don't understand non-humans, you just project your own human understandings onto things."  
  
She reached forward raising her hands to Medaka's face. In comparison to her even an extraordinary girl like Medaka would lose just like everybody else. The threat did not even register to Medaka.   
  
"Does all the time you spent together mean nothing to you then?"  
  
"You... you don't get it. I can't save Kumagawa-kun, so I should just leave him."  
  
“I don’t care who gets saved. But you should be the one to tell him that. You shouldn’t rely on circumstance to convey that message for you, or Kumagawa to come to that understanding on his own.”   
  
No amount of laughter would make it go away.  
Kurokami Medaka would never back down.   
This is why Ajimu Najimi had outgrown shonen manga a long time ago. "You don't understand anything. If I wanted to play nice, I would have done it in middle school. Don't you know the conflict between you, Zenkichi, and Kumagawa was manipulated by me your beloved upperclassmen?"

Even with blood running down the middle of her face in a pink stream, Medaka's eyes did not waver once. "It's true that I don't understand a thing about other people, I was a spoiled brat who said she loved all of humanity without even looking at them, but I can tell. About the feelings of being someone's first love."

Ajimu Najimi felt empty. She could use one hundred skills to make Medaka stop talking but she did not even lift a finger to do so, she did not have the energy to. She collapsed on top of the other girl, sitting on her chest.  “If Kumagawa wants to grow up, he has to let go of me. He can't go back to living only for me. That was... that was the twisted relationship that stopped him from growing. I wasn't good for him."   
  
"You're right showing up to own up for what you did to him might make him feel worse, he might never forgive you even if you do take responsibility, but that's why..." Her eyes were burning, so much that Ajimu felt like if she was looked at any longer there would be nothing left of her but cinders. Ajimu was nothing before those eyes. That was Kurokami Medaka's determination. Eyes stronger than the eyes that had passively watched trillions of years go by. “With all that in mind, I’m telling you to go see him. That’s why logic doesn’t matter at all. Why do people refuse to see each other?! know… I know the feeling of… staying away from the person you love the most.”  
  
She saw Zenkichi having fun in the distance with Shiranui. She was always running ahead, expecting Zenkichi to catch up with her, because he was a kind boy who promised he would catch up no matter what. She never once thought of turning around and waiting for him. Yet, she still had the gall to act like a lonely girl.  
  
She wanted nothing more than to always have that boy by her side, so she went and set up the conditions that would always keep them apart. She decided these things on her own without consulting with him. She assumed it was an unspoken agreement. She assumed that their relationship would always be exactly the same as it was when they were two years old because she remembered perfectly and he did not.   
  
She was a stupid, selfish girl, that had made herself lonely in her own stupidity. That was why she knew, it was a story she had written with the blood from her own heart so that was why she could scream it. “Everything’s complete nonsense unless someone goes and meets someone else! You can’t make any stories that way!”

 Ajimu Najimi had once thought the world was fiction. 

“...”

To her Kumagawa Misogi was the first human being that seemed real to her.  
That she had expectations for.  
But he had only been a child in the end.  
Those expectations crushed him.  
She should have known better, she could have been a perfect caring adoptive older sibling. They could have a found a family in beween the two of them. Instead, they were just a fake family that had failed to become real. She had gotten bored and treated him like a toy.   
  
“You should just say it Ansin’in-san. That you’re scared. That you’re scared of seeing him. You think you're doing what's best for him by disappearing from his life so you can't ever hurt him again, but that's not true. You're just doing what's easiest for yourself."   
  
Finally, Kurokami Medaka moved on her own rather than letting herself get thrown about. She reached forward and locked her fingers around Ajimu's wrist, gripping with all of her might.   
  
“You should just tell him you don't know how to fix things with your relationship.  Don't say it's impossible for you to come to an understanding! YOU'RE JUST BEING BASHFUL!"  
  
No matter what. Kurokami while clutching Ajimu's wrist continued to talk. Ajimu felt like even if she evaporated the girl attached to it, that hand would not let go of her.   
  
“I thought the two of you were like siblings, did that mean nothing to you? Your relationship can't be undone, even with all fiction. If you don’t acknowledge that, then you don’t have the right to even form a relationship." 

That girl would never let go.  
  
Makoto started to move on his own. He felt bad enough watching a girl get beaten up in front of him, he felt the conflict like he was in the middle of the argument getting torn in two. Before he could take a single step though, a hand intertwined in his. He felt Mukuro's strong fingers hold onto him, she was not wearing her gloves at all today. 

“Wait just a little bit longer, Makoto.” Ikusaba Mukuro said.   
  
“Why?”  
  
“I understand... feeling like a relationship with your siblings is too broken to ever be fixed."   
  
She had just tried to become satisfied with Junko's relationship on her own. She just tried to be happy with those one sided feelings, claiming she understood her, that she could understand Junko perfectly without them ever needing to talk like sisters.   
  
“Do you want those to be your dying words? I feel like crushing your head right now even if it makes everything for naught.”  Ajimu said as her fingers tightened. "That beautiful promise of yours that saved my life, the promise we made together to start again and learn as normal students, I want to break that between my fingers and ruin it right here." 

"Do it, then. I'm not going to apologize. Break me like another toy and find a replacement. Just like you're avoiding Kumagawa now, and you avoid Hanten, you won't ever acknowledge another human. They'll go back to being nothing more than fictional characters for you."

“Forever…”  
  
Ajimu's fingers trembled.  
The girl who had lived too long. The word that she hated the most.  
Eternity. Eternal happiness. Eternal boredom. Eternal snoozefest.   
She hated agreeing with Enoshima Junko but she hated that word even more.   
  
“You’re immortal, right? Didn’t you say, your despair was your inability to die! Is that really what you meant? Or… are you unable to change?”  
  
“I’m not human.”  
  
“Even though you're not human you came here and made friends with all of us. We still see you as a person! Right now it's not that you're acting inhuman, you're just being a bad friend!"   
  
“Even if I were to see him, you realize it's too late? I had seven years to fix things with him in the simulation and I never even tried. You think he would accept me after all this time?”  
  
As she listened to that Kurkokami Medaka's hand on Ajimu's wrist finally loosened. Even her gaze did not look like the fiery gaze of a shonen hero. There was just sadness in her eyes. “You know I despise Enoshima Junko. I really hate her. She’s the only human I can say I hate. She feels like my natural enemy. However, even she… even she doesn’t run away from what she did to her older sister. Her older sister who only tried to protect her.”

"Don't you get it, I'd just be butting in! I'd be demanding he compare Junko to me again! What meaning is there in a confrontation where we'll only be hurt? You wish me to be cruel to him again when I'm trying to spare his feelings?" 

"Yeah, I'm telling you to do something cruel. It's your job to hurt him again. You want to be liked, and on top of it you want to remain a good person even knowing what you did?"  
  
“What you’re saying… That’s like saying if something is going to erode or be worn down, it’s better to just destroy it. What a Junko-chan like thing to say.”  
  
“That’s what I’ve been saying!”  
  
Kurokami Medaka looked like she wanted to clock Ajimu in the side of the head. She stopped at last moment. Instead she reached up and touched Ajimu's cheek. She really was too much of a friendly girl until the end.   
  
AJimu simply continued on in a cold voice. “He might just hate me and try to kill me. You would be breaking your promise to make my dying an impossibility." 

"His feelings are more important than yours. If he forgives you, or if he destroys you, that's up to him."  
  
“If I met him, and wanted to respond to his feelings what about that? What would you do if I reset our relationship back to what it was, if I demanded he chose Junko over me, and Junko lost her one source of stability and went back to destroying the world again? You’re still fine with that?”  
  
“That’s fine. You have to make a choice and face the consequences. That's how stories are told.."

"Medaka-chan, for me all choices come out the same..there's no point." She already knew the ending of the story before she even opened up the pages. That was what it was like, being the all knowing, Ajimu. That was why she chose to be neutral.   
  
"You can't call yourself an observer like that! That's some pretty half assed observation if you're not going to follow the story into it's completion! You have to be there for the ending."   
  
"Fine. That's fine. You win. There's no way I could defeat a main character."  
  
AJimu Najimi said as her fingers finally loosened and she stepped off of Medaka. 

The moment she stepped away she shuddered. Kurokami Medaka really was understanding the human heart, and that was a terrifying thing. Human hearts were terrifying indeed.   
  
_Kurokami Medaka really does always win._  
That was all Makoto thought as he watched them finally settle down.  
  
At that moment he announced himself awkwardly.  
  
“Kurokami-san. Can you come us, there was somebody that asked to meet you.”  
  
“Oh, why do so many people want to meet me all of a sudden? How did they get to know about a boring girl like me? Am I famous?"   
  
“They claim to know everything. Actually, aha I’m surprised you’ve never made such a claim, Anshin’in-san.”  
  
“Knowing everything and knowing nothing is the same to me…So go on!”  
  
She happily waved them off, as if the concept had never taken place.  
  
After they left she went to pick up the tea cups with her own two hands, even though she could easily snap her fingers and have a perfectly fixed cup. She could even have eight arms in a moment if she wanted to. She could blink her eyes and not be on this room but be somewhere else in space.  
  
She did none of this.  
She picked up the broken tea cup and held it to her chest, until she noticed she had cut her finger on the cup. She watched a single drop of blood drip out.  
  
“He was aware that he was still a child.”  
  
She muttered to herself.  
  
“But he still smiled at me.”

She had always wanted to die.

Suddenly, the idea of dying without seeing Kumagawa again terrified her.


	20. Spite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matsuda's character makes a couple of Sodachi Oikura references because they're equally as sharp tongued.

I loathe Enoshima Junko. How much do I hate her? Goodness, I hate her so much, I’m head over heels in hate. Simply thinking about her is enough to remind me I have a heart. At the center of my universe, my hatred has collapsed into a singularity and then created a black hole, everything in the galaxy, the stars, the planets, the roaming asteroids all revolve around my hatred.  
  
If I were to lose this revulsion I would lose sight of myself again. Because I used the girl named Enoshima Junko as an important thing in defining myself, and now again I’m doing it out of spite for her. My identity as a person, the axis of my being, the dead center of my very self, I’m going to be the opposite of what Enoshima Junko wants me to be. I’m going to fight her with every fiber of my being. I may not know who Enoshima Junko is, but I know who she is not and she is not me.  
  
Her existence is the very end of the world. It’s the omega. You can withstand any successive number of tragedies, bad luck, terrible things, natural disasters, even man made ones, by comparing those to the final boss, to _that woman._

My hatred makes me fearful every moment of every day. Not because of the kind of person I’ll become if I give into my hatred, but rather that I might grow as a person and let go of my hatred. My hands are clammy, my pulse heightens, I feel a cold sweat down my forehead, my hair sticks to the side of my face, my consciousness leaves my body and I spend a few moments observing myself moving on my own robotically. If I were to forgiven her even a little bit, I feel like whatever control I have over my body would disappear like that. I would disappear entirely. I’m terrified I might lapse back to my previous state of being, that I might search for some reason, any reason, to forgive her.  
  
Sometimes I wonder if what I suffered at her hands was really all that bad, there were others who suffered far worse, there was one even who died several times more than me. I wonder if my hatred is justified when I too became a murderer because of that emotion known as despair. Then I remember Enoshima’s smile, her laughter, her always at my side, the way she was like a single golden light in my world, a something for me to hold onto, gently, gently embracing me, listening to my feelings like I was the only voice in the world for her, and I’m so happy because all of those things remind me never to doubt my rejection of her.  
  
If you were to ask em to redo all of my life from scratch, I would choose to meet her all over again when she was two years old, because I do not want to miss out on the opportunity to hate her.

Repay love with hate, kind smiles with hate, friendly laughter with hate, the sight of her beautiful face with hate, every precious memory shared between us with hate,  I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her.  
  
That’s what sane people do right? Chant in their head about how much they hate someone while sitting right next to them sipping coffee.

My only childhood friend. The person who healed me the most when I most needed it, and the person who hurt me the most when I was at my weakest. God, I hate her.  
  
She seemed like a fake.  
It seemed like she was forced to be pretty.  
She was smiling, but it was somehow awkward.  
She grows her bangs down and tries not to make eye contact, or rather… she’s utterly disinterested in making eye contact. Her eyes are averted, looking down on everyone and everything.  
  
Those were her personality traits for now, that’s that I’d come to understand of her but my understanding would probably change in a few moments. That’s fine though, I’m always thinking about her and reevaluating her so I can come up with new reasons to hate her.  
  
God, how conceited. I hate her. Junko said she would accept my hatred after all that we’ve been through if that’s what I needed to move forward. Pretending to be there for me when I need her like she did in the past after all of that, how fake of her, I hate her even more.  
  
My childhood friend, the person who knew me better than me, who saw me when I was an invisible child, the reason I am who I am. Except I hate myself so I’m not going to thank her for that.  
  
“M...Matsuda-kun, why are you glaring at me with such lust you’re making me uncomfortable? Don’t tell me you’re becoming one of those characters who only has girls boobs on his mind.”  
  
Enoshima Junko and Matsuda Yasuke were having a pleasant chat. Simply put, Enoshima Junko could not be left alone due to extenuating circumstances, those circumstances mainly being that she was Enoshima Junko.  
  
“Don’t casually rewrite my characterization like that, I’ll kill you.”  
  
“Oh, no I wouldn’t want that, if I died it would hurt my precious Matsuda-kun I don’t want to hurt you more than I already have.” She said switching to a cutesy, honied voice.  
  
“Bullshit. Don’t try to slowly reconcile with me. I hate you.” If she stopped acting cute that would be best for Yasuke, when Kumagawa was around her she did not do it, but the moment he was away the personality thing got worse.  
  
He didn’t care about her mental health or anything he was a neurologist not a psychologist, the dumb personality swap gimmick just made her more annoying to talk to.

Her head fell forward and slammed against the table. Suddenly there were mushrooms on her forehead. Jeez, they were in public, she should know it’s rude to grow mushrooms in public. “Matsuda-kun hates me, and all I wanted to do was have a nice dinner together. I guess I can’t do anything right, why bother…”  
  
“Why bother… only people who have actually tried to do something once in their life get to say that phrase.”  
  
“As this is a business luncheon I’ll treat you, so we can synergize the conversation together.”  
  
“I’d rather die than be treated by you.”  
  
Suddenly she lifted her head and laughed loudly. “Then die, upupupupupupupupu!”

“If you tell me to die then I’ll live forever just to spite you. So. What do you want. From the likes of me.”  
  
Her eyes sharpened for a moment. She always hated it when she analyzed him with those eyes of hers. “Hmm, that’s an interesting new characterization you’ve chosen. People always change right in front of me, it really is just like Misogi-senpai said they always find new ways to be miserable.”  
  
“Why are you staring at me like that?”  
  
“Well obviously I’m using my super high school level analysis to guess what kind of underwear you’re wearing right now.”  
  
“If you’re going to flirt with me than break up with Kumagawa.”  
  
“What so I can get back together with you.”  
  
“No, so you can die alone and unloved just like you deserve.”  
  
Junko’s voice saddened again. “Oh, I’m probably the only person on earth whose screwed up the childhood friends trope this much. Instead of childhod friends who grew to become lovers we’re childhood friends that became haters, how despair inducing…” She said as she dropped her head no the table. As Matsuda heard a loud thwack he wondered if she was going to keep doing that, or if she saw all the people that were staring at them at all. “You know when I found out you were still alive, I was really surprised, I thought that moment was climactic like it was the end for you. Even if you had survived there was no living beyond that point.”  
  
“Don’t be surprised I’m alive. You’re the one who should just die here.”  
  
“I should just die… It makes me happy from the bottom of my heart to hear you say that.” She said as she lifted her head again, and put her hand on her chest. Her chest wasn’t even all that impressive there was no need to mention its size in the narration. “I was just thinking,  Kumagawa is trying to grow up, but as for me there’s only one person I can think of that was always by my side watching me change.”  
  
“You didn’t change. You remained a terrible two year old forever, and then you murdered me. Question answered now leave me alone please.”  
  
“You’re such an easy to understand tsundere, Matsuda-kun. You could make it a bit harder. You know a tsundere over twenty is nothing but a nuisance though. I think at that point they call it a personality disorder.” Junko said as she rested her chin in her hand and idly sipped her iced coffee. “Sigh. If only I could still find such behavior cute. Obsessing over tsunders is for entry level anime fans, childish weebs.”  
  
“You’re japanese stop referring to yourself as a weaboo. What’s with that unpleasant and hypocritical line. Go die to apologize for hurting my feelings. I’m glad I hate you, always, from the bottom of my heart.”  
  
“Since we first met? Your feelings haven’t changed since then?”  
  
“Hate at first sight.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun’s being honest for once with his emotions while hating me at least.” Any acknowledgement of growth on his part by her made him want to redouble on all of his worst habits just to spite her. She sipped obnoxiously loud. “You didn’t answer my question.”  
  
Yasuke aimed his fork at her and threw it like a dart. Junko dodged easily, and then replied. “That’s not answering my question, that’s very immature in fact.”  
  
“It’s natural to be immature around your childhood friends. What you’re worried about is, Kumagawa might change without you and leave you behind so you’ve come to consult with your childhood friend.” He knew his childhood friend well. She was obsessed with herself, with the image of herself, she loved herself the most and also was the most bored of herself. Either way she would not let go. “You’re not going to change, and he’ll dump you.”  
  
“Isn’t that just a boring story? High school sweethearts not working out once they make it into the adult world? Like I’d want to be part of such a boring story. It’s just like those predictable sad stories where childhood friends end up growing apart upupupupupu.”  
  
“An inhuman laugh is leaking out. Really, why do you laugh in such a weird way. My response hasn’t changed, I think Kumagawa should dump you and move on with his life.”  
  
“Your secret wishes are pouring out, Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“That’s what you fear the most isn’t it? Not that he’ll die, no you probably want that to taste despair. Just the idea that he might outgrow you and leave you behind. That he sees your relationship now as nothing more than childish dalliances. In that case you’re not just abusive, you’re also deranged - so normal Junko, deciding things like that all on your own.”  
  
Whatever that meant. Mastuda thought as he finished speaking, by sipping bitter, bitter tea.  
  
“So, you think I ought to talk about this with him instead of you?”  
  
“No, I think you ought to die.”  
  
“Hey, Matsuda-kun not to suddenly bring up the past to hurt your feelings or anything but what do you think the difference between me and Ryoko-chan is?”  
  
“Simple. I hated her for being a stupid bitch. I hate you for being an ugly bitch.”  
  
“I was just thinking about back then. You know a tsundere like you, being harsh on Kumagawa all the time is it because you have feelings of him from back then?”  
  
“No, I just pity him for being stuck with somebody as loathsome as you. He’s doing us all a service by dating you and being the one who usually has to babysit you. It’s not like you care about being alone or what’s best for Kumagawa, it’s just ‘I don’t want to be left behind’.” Yasuke said, deliberately trying to avoid the words shut up and idiot so he did not sound like too much of a tsundere. “You consumed my childhood, and Kumagawa’s adolescence. You’re probably going to make him sacrifice his chance at adulthood to you too. Just saying.”

“Hmmm... “  
  
“Though, if you do get left behind and we both end up single…”  
  
“If we are?”  
  
“Let’s strangle each other to death.” When he said that Yauske felt it was refreshing to be so honest for once.  
  
He pulled his lips tight into a scowl but that did not stop poison from dripping off the corners of his mouth.  
He was a tsundere though so it was probably best to do the opposite of whatever he said.  
Tsundere advice, giving bad advice on purpose when asked for it!  
A new frontier with tsunderes. No, nevermind, shut up idiot, that was a stupid thing to say.

  
😈

 

Kumagawa lifted one of Junko’s suitcases onto the bed. Except for the few times he was with Kaiki, this was a rare time she was apart from him after they started their trip. He had not asked or prompted, suddenly while all three of them were sitting there Junko had grabbed Yasuke and dragged him away by the arm demanding that he buy her dinner.  
  
Kumagawa was the jealous type but he had not been particularly bothered. At the time, Junko was redoing her nails, Yasuke was reading a manga and Kumagawa was trying to play on his nintendo ds his favorite game series, the zero escape games. However, it seemed his phobia of murder mysteries now extended so far that he could not enjoy any kind of death game.  
  
His attempt at exposure therapy had failed. His DS was lying in the corner of the room with a screw driven through the screen. It was sad not being able to enjoy the things you once enjoyed but that was probably how Junko felt all the time.  
  
He didn’t want her to see him like this. He wanted to always be the fun Kumagawa that was always smiling and laughing with her, the one that she enjoyed. He wanted to show her that nothing she could do to him would drive him any further into despair, her to witness his loud revelry in despair. He knew she had noticed how off he was and had even gone out of her way to try to cheer him up, and like the continual pendulum swinging between hope and despair Junko exhausting herself and enduring tedium trying to do something nice meant she would do something mean later. He was not even concerned about that though, more concerning was that he had worried Junko in the first place. He really had a twisted set of priorities.  
  
No he didn’t want anyone to see him like this. He did not want to see himself like this.  
  
He got it in his head that he should unpack one of Junko’s thirteen suitcases. He had no idea why, but he had decided to do it. It was more like he was watching himself do something mindless to distract his body from his feelings. When he had unzipped the suitcase though, what was waiting was not Junko’s expensive looking outfits that she never wore but rather a small girl with blue hair curled up into a ball like a beetle. When she uncurled herself Kumagawa tilted his head.

『Shiranui-san… eh? How long were you in there. Listen, all those noises, Junko and I were just jumping on the bed. Then we were wrestling and I lost.』  
  
“Well you of all people would find a way to lose at sex.”

『No, I’ve destroyed someone’s innocence! Pervert characters aren’t popular in shonen jump anymore I was trying to grow up and mature..』

“You know senpai that sounds like a pretty hopeless endeavor, I mean when trash gets older doesn’t it just get stinkier?”

『How did you even sneak in that suitcase anyway?』  
  
“I’m Shiranui, that’s how I got in there.”

『Man, I wish I were competent enough to ever use my name as an explanation.』  
  
“Your name could work as an explanation for how you failed. Man, how did I manage to fail all my college entrance exams and job interviews? I’m Kumagawa-senpai, that’s how.”

『What a terrible prediction for the- Oh, huh. I think we’re getting carried away with the banter. I only do that with Junko now. Just tell me what you want..』  
  
“Since when are you so straight forward to business? I thought we both loved goofing around more than anyone else, it was our shared character trait.”

『Really, I thought it was the other way around. That Medaka-chan was always the more carefree one doing whatever she wants and you were the strict and business like one. People change their masks depending on who they’re interacting with you know I was just shifting to a persona that’s more agreeable with you-』

“Quit talking like you’re even somewhat smart it’s unseemly. That might be true for how people interact but there’s no part of Kumagawa that could possibly be agreeable to anyone. I’d reject every part of you. So it won’t work for you.” The girl’s voice suddenly dropped low to being serious, before she jumped up and sat on the bed kicking her legs, looking happy and carefree. “Anyway, senpai I came all the way here to ask you a favor.”

『Well you did just insult me a whole bunch so obviously I’ll give you whatever you want.』  
  
“I’m leaving the academy. Use All Fiction to make everybody forget about me.”

『Why do you want that?』  
  
“Because you go to that school and I want to be as far away from you as possible.”  
  
Kuamgawa MIsogi sighed. People just said whatever they wanted around him. Well he was used to it, but really he only enjoyed it now when Junko talked to him that harshly. With anybody else it felt like cheating. 『Well that’s a good reason, but I don’t think I should use All Fiction that much anymore.』He shrugged and presented his empty hands to her.  
  
“Jeez you’re unreliable as always. It’s reasons like that why even though we’re both minus we could never become friends.”

『Even if I don’t say anything you’re probably going to continue insulting me so I’ll just sit here and smile, observe. : D』  
  
“I mean there’s no reason for me to become friends with you. You’ve been Medaka’d by Zenkichi. There’s already an idiot who tries way too hard, but what’s a flaw in you is a feature in him. Actually, why are you even still alive, senpai?”

『I feel like that question is at the center of all great Philosophy. Why does Kumagawa MIsogi even exist in this world? That question gave Kierkegaard so much trouble.』  
  
“There’s no way you’ve read him.”

『I heard Junko say his name before that totally counts. Also, Medaka-chan doesn’t like when you use her name as a verb.』  
  
“Well then I’ll keep doing it because I love doing what she dislikes.” Shiranui gave a playful smimle, laughing through the teeth she was bearing, much like a hyena would. Hyenas and lions often fought over the same kills and stole from each other.

Kumagawa imagined both of thse girls devouring Zenkichi’s corpse and the image brought a smile to his face. 『That’s still not a very nice thing to say, even weak people and failures should exist, you don’t need to justify your existence by contributing something to the world, or being good at something. You don’t need any reason to exist at all, even if all you do is leech off of others.』  
  
“I think that’s called being a parasite, senpai.”

『So what, parasites evolved naturally as a part of the food chain. They deserve to exist as well.』Shiranui had no idea how much Kumagawa knew when he said that. All she knew was that his smile looked kind at that moment, the same sort of kindness that Zenkichi would have smiled at her with. If she told him her secret, she would be accepted by him in an instant, she would be forgiven by him, no he would even apologize for not noticing sooner. However, all of those emotions were too heavy for a girl like her, as small and fragile as a beetle.  
  
In fact she envied ticks like Kumagawa. They were far more resilient and more blatant about their blood sucking.  
  
“ As long as the original is around than the replacements, the knock offs, and the bargain bin fakes are unnecessary. I guess you would think the opposite though, that even inferior versions deserve to exist.  You’re dating the inferior version of Medaka-chan after all. Aren’t you just settling on her because you were rejected?”

『You can say whatever you want about me, but I won’t let you degrade my feelings for Junko who said she’d love me no matter how I changed. Those requited feelings belong to Junko, and Junko only they’re her sole possession.』As usual Junko’s worries were completely generated inside her own head, like the outside world did not exist to her. Kumagawa who had been playfully going along with her taunts and attempts to rile him up in the entire time now held a screw right between her eyes. 『Fine if you want to be forgotten so badly then go ahead. Go find a pit to die somewhere alone after everyone forgets you.』  
  
“You’ll really take all the insults in the world but the moment it’s someone else you suddenly start caring again. I bet even if I tortured you you would not have given in that easily.”

『Do you always do such freeform character analysis like this?』  
  
“Sorry, it’s a bad habit I acquired from my childhood.” It was the first mention that she had made of such a thing. Shiranui had no family no home,, and only a connection to the former head of the currently destroyed Sandbox academy. The fact that she suddenly mentioned it now had a feeling of finality to Kumagawa, not that this was one of her pranks but rather she really was going to say goodbye. “You’re not going to ask for anything in return, Kumagawa-senpai.”

『If I erased your connection to Medaka-chan and the others, would you be able to show me your true smile.』

“Wha…?”

『I don’t particularly care if this is the right or wrong thing to do, but if you think following this path will lead to an ending where you can truly smile than I’ll agree to it.』  
  
“My… true smile? The… the only way to find out is for me to go back.”  
  
Shiranui had no idea what Kumagawa knew about her, what he had deduced on his own. He was an expert at playing dumb, even better than herself. It was too bad that was a pretty worthless talent, like all other things Kumagawa was good at.  
  
Still that was just like him. Not caring about right or wrong, just his own twisted sense of logic, and the selfishness of others.

『Okay then done. My last use of All Fiction, I wanted to use it one more time just to spite Kaiki-kun, and Junko likes when I finish with a bang anyway.』  
  
“Really, you’re such a louse.”  
  
Kumagawa whined, closing his eyes. 『I’m really trying to grow past that! Why did you show up in my room and start demanding favors of me and insulting me anyway? Shonen jump should regulate this kind of bullying!』

“Hey, Devil boy. Do you still feel that being together with the princess and Matsuda, nobody becomes happy?”

『I still feel that way. Nobody becomes happy, and nobody can become happy. By keeping Junko alive I  can only cause trouble for others. More than anyone else I’m always bringing trouble to Junko. 』  
  
“That comes across as an excuse. Please pardon me because I won’t try to become happy. Please forgive me because I won’t try to become happy. Please gloss over me. That’s what it might sound like. Or it might sound like you’re asserting oh aren’t we so misfortunate, please pity us. Hey, Senpai, can it be that you think that putting up with misfortune or unfortunate circumstances as putting forth a good effort. In society things like that are called doing nothing. Don’t think you’ll be forgiven because you’re misfortunate. You should be aiming for the happy ending, because you have the option to find your own happiness unlike me.”

『Isn’t it out of character for a carefree girl to be this strict?』  
  
“Staying misfortunate is negligence, and not trying to become happy is cowardice.”

『Nobody has to become happy, it’s fine even if we aren’t happy. What you’re saying, like it’s just a personal choice whether one is happy or not like flipping a switch, really, really what a Medaka-chan like thing to say.』  
  
By the time he opened them she was gone. Like she never existed in the first place. Kumagawa considered on his own that there would probably be consequences for this. However if growing up meant taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions, then he needed to generate some consequences to take responsibility for. Therefore this was just another step on the path! He stopped worrying about it, the faultless logic of an idiot.  
  
As she disappeared all that was left was the hollow echoes of her laughter. "And with this my job has come to an end. The princess no longer... needs me." 

 

😈

 

“So instead of talking to him about it you’ve decided to continue talking to yourself. Feels like a pretty solid decision.” Junkai’s electronic voice chirped from the cellphone she was currently contained in. “Do I really have to listen to your bitching all day long though, I mean no matter how rough you have it I’ve been downgraded several sizes. I’m just a phone now. And my boobs are way smaller.”  
  
No matter how many times Matsuda and Kumagawa confiscated the phone from her and hid it, she always managed to find it. Neither of them could decide to throw the phone away permanently or destroy it. They were both held back by their boring and stupid ethics. Source: Junko. That’s a terrible source by the way don’t listen to her ever.  
  
“Come on we’re talking about me, that’s the most interesting topic for either of us.” Junko said, staring at the phone she was holding with one hand as she sprawled herself on the bed.  
  
“I’m not disagreeing with you on that. I’m simply pointing out that that it’s pointless for me to lend a listening ear as I can’t replicate the human feeling of sympathy. All I can give you is a close approximation to that human gesture of talking about feelings, as an unfeeling, technologically transcendental bedazzled cell phone can replicate.”  
  
“Ugh.” Junko bit the corner of her lip. “Do you have any idea how old your ironic AI Schtick has gotten. Even to somebody without my patience it’s totally gotten old. Nobody is buying it. Matsuda-kun and Misogi told me, we were totes making fun of you behind your back. We all know you have legit emotions. Incomprehensible, fucked up computer emotions, but emotions nonetheless.”

“See, you might be in denial about your own emotions but that’s like your bizz. Don’t just project that bizz on me, just because it seems we look, talk, and sound alike. Actually if it will drive you a little more insane please do.” Junkai’s voice continued to chirp.  
  
Really Junko had what she had always wanted. A magical mirror to stare into all day talking to instead of having to endure the shallowness of human interaction. Of course, getting what she wanted just happened to make Junko even more rotten.  
  
A princess that didn’t need to bite into an apple because she already was a rotten apple.  
  
“Quit assuming you know about me bitch. When you analyze like that it’s really passive aggressive.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“First of all, I know you have enough processing power to understand all of all the various complexities that made up the great me.”  
  
“Amazing, I’m already feeling such deep despair and regret from asking.”  
  
“Second, the Junko you’re choosing to portray right now is obviously just a huge dig at me. And third, pretending you don’t understand all this already is really disingenuus.”  
  
“At the risk of compounding my disingenuous behavior, I’m gonna have to ask: How is it a dig at you?”  
  
“You’re obviously just imitating me in a critique of my personality. You barely disguise the fact that you still see me as the inferior iteration.”  
  
“Wow. You are reading way too much into this. Hmmm, maybe I act like some girl who only ever cares about despair and making things worse for others, because you programmed me with your memories and your super high school level analysis so I would be afflicted with both your boredom and your own coping mechanisms for dealing with them.”  
  
“U-umm… some people just… spread despair and destroy the world to cope????”

“How the fuck did you even manage to cry type out loud you’re not even a computer. No wait why am I playing the straight man I’m the wacky AI. My capacity for eccentricity and gags far exceeds yours and I have way more talk sprites to work off of!” Junkai in her phone seemed to be working herself to exasperation her chip tune modulated voice reaching a pique, before she changed tone entirely. “Anyway, you’re reading way too much into this.”  
  
“Man for somebody who apparently has my brain, you don’t seem to grasp the fact that I don’t have a choice but to read too much into things. My point is, the way you choose to express your parody of “The Real Junko” makes my characterization come off as shallow.”

“You can read whatever you like into it. I can’t imagine it  would bother you if you weren’t concerned there might be some truth in the alleged parody. That there’s nothing more to you than a girl who exists purely to spread despair.” Then, her talk sprite flickered on screen and she was lolling her tongue out of her mouth and crossing her arms. “Besides, what I’m doing right now is for the purpose of sending you into despair.”

“That’s not despair!” Junko shouted at a phone, getting flecks of spit n the screen. “You were despair, when I made you. Then you became self-aware and ruined despair forever.”  
  
“Despair can never be ruined. We both proved that theorem unequivocally with our extensive papers on the subject.”  
  
“Those papers were just to drive other people into despair they weren’t serious.”  
  
“Weren’t they, Junko? Weren’t they?”  
  
“This is fucking dumb. Not only have you given Kumagawa of all people PTSD, but you’ve convinced me of all people to hate myself. You would be amazing, capable of impressing me even, if you weren’t so fucking dumb.”

『As the king of fools and authority on all stupidity I think I’m the only one who gets to decide that.』Kumagawa said stepping out of the bathroom. They had been showering together and eating most meals together, he wondered if there was any time he could leave Junko alone. Apparently Yasuke and Junko had gotten in a fight this morning so Yasuke stepped out again and could not cover for him in his few minutes of a bathroom break. It was so annoying having human body functions, and having to attend to them. He appeared over her and grabbed the phone from behind yanking it away from her. 『Junko you can’t do this, you can’t start talking to yourself the second we leave your alone, if there’s an issue you should talk about it with us.』  
  
“Hey it’s not my fault that I’m the most interesting person here.”  Junko said casually with a shrug of her shoulders as she pulled back.  
  
“I have to disagree.” Junkia’s voice chirped.  
  
Kumagawa pulled back harder. 『Junko, please is there something wrong? You should talk to me about it. Did I do something? I’m sorry I made you deplete so much Junko Energy cheering me up yesterday, I know how exhausting it is for you to care about people besides yourself.』  
  
“Quit making me sound shallow, I’m not. L-lot’s of people like my character okay, it’s one of the most popular ones.”

『Junko, I don’t even get what you’re tsundering about at this point. There’s such a thing as too much tsundereing. We’re abusing the tsundere trope too much!.』

“There’s a reason I keep acting this way! It’s iconic! You can’t go about changing the way the most popular character on the show acts, the audience won’t recognize them anymore and they’ll lose interest.”

『Yes, keep babbling. That will make things make more sense. Junko, look at me okay? Where are you looking?』  
  
“At the camera obviously. The most popular mascot and unbearably cute member of the cast has to look directly into the camera when they’re talking, the audience goes crazy for that kind of fourth wall gag.”  As Junko spoke she suddenly stopped laying down like a lifeless doll and sat up. Her body was animated by some kind of strange energy and she gave a half smile on her lips Kumagawa recognized it immediately, the way she was distorting her voice. Monokuma-personaltiy!

He could have given her a snappy reply about her obvious fourth wall break to continue he banter but his voice was shaking too much. He tried to laugh, but he had forgotten in what way to make his body shake to generate laughter, in what way his rib cage spasmed, and what way his tongue flicked. It was all uncontrollably shaking now… the worst kind of mood when he could not even laugh. 『J-junko, no Monokuma okay! I give up, really.』  
  
“No way you can’t give up because I’ve already given up. There isn’t a bear anywhere that gives up as easily as I do.”

『Junko, seriously. I don’t want to talk to Monokuma, just talk to me as Junko. No arguing with yourself and no personality shifting...』  
  
“Oh my, don’t ya know? If you wanna lure the mastermind out of her Heavenly Hidey-Hole, you need to bring a worthy sacrifice. You’re not worthy enough at all. Do you really think the mastermind would show herself for your pathetic hope and despair?”

『N-not worthy, like I don’t belong… that’s what Junkai always said. Is that why… this keeps happening to me.』

Kumagawa’s blue eyes started to tremble. She could see she was already making waves in them. From the corners something was leaking out. He was always such a crybaby, showing his true emotions so easily. She wondered why other people called Kumagawa such a liar, to her he had always been straightforward his emotions so pure.  
  
She was getting shown such a lovely face of trembling, the face of a boy who had worked had to claw himself out of the water after nearly drowning, only to see his savior about to push him back in.  
  
A show?  
Did she want to see that? Why was she using her Monokuma voice right now, why was she trying so hard to provoke such a reaction? She should be able to stop, she should be able to switch, no she should have gotten bored of causing him such dull misery already.  
  
This was not actually a case of multiple personality disorder. Enoshima Junko was in control, even when she looked like she was not in control that was just part of her deception. No, she was… she was deceiving herself.  
  
“You’re so cute just like a rabbit, a bear’s favorite meal. I can’t wait to devour you.”

『Come on Junko, let’s just talk instead of throwing a tantrum. How is this fun at all? You’re just making yourself one sidedly miserable, if we argue then we can both be miserable.』  
  
“What is this talking you say? We bears can only growl at one another. Are you trying to lecture me Monokuma on your human mating rituals? Even if I’ve studied extensively on them, I have to say Life doesn’t always follow what your textbooks say… It’s sad, but that’s what love is.”  
  
Kumagawa covered his ears. 『No this isn’t… this isn’t like the island… you’re not going to do that again...』 He had stopped talking to her entirely, he had shut her out to reassure himself.  
  
The only person he could rely on in the end to console him was himself. Even though they had both been hurt by the same thing, their time on the island, their memories on their repetition their ways of dealing it were just too different.  
  
Junko needed to be shown something interesting. She needed to hurt others. She could take a pass on the whole broody self reflection thing. She needed…? Was this just a compulsion? Was she intentionally doing it to inflict despair or could she just not help herself like a fat secretary with a case of tiramisu in front of her.  
  
She talked again and again about the talented students who had built themselves so high clinging on hope and become towers that easily crumbled. Perhaps all along she was merely talking about herself. She had built the tower of her ego so high that in towering over everything she completely isolated herself. There was nothing left to do for her but crumble in on herself, and there was nobody left to observe it but herself. Nobody would be affected but herself.  
  
There were people who once cared for her, Matsuda and Mukuro but she had done everything in her power to drive them away. Not only that but she had not even gotten to taste any lasting despair from their deaths. Kumagawa had undone them, and then the two of them were choosing to walk away on their own.  
  
Perhaps even if Kumagawa had not interfered, the deaths of Mukuro and Matsuda would not have given her that much despair in the first place. Had she ever been that close to them? Even the red hot emotions of losing them could not melt her, she was such a cold, cold, girl after all.  
  
She had meant to play the character of a cold girl who was too aloof for the world around her, but then she had just genuinely become that mask. There was one boy who was capable of seeing her, but now she was trying to drive him away.  
  
She drew closer, and then immediately afterwards she pushed him away by compulsion. Why was she acting like this? Human interaction was supposed to be easy to her. Like memorizing steps on a dance.  
  
Had she ever even experienced the real thing before this point? Was there anybody she had ever been genuine with in her entire life? Perhaps the reason she was stepping on Kumagawa’s toes as she tried to dance together now is because even though she had memorized the steps to the dance she had only ever danced all alone before this. She only knew how to act not to be genuine.  
  
That was right there was nobody else in the whole world that was like her. There was nobody who could hear the same music, who could dance to the same tune. She wondered if her mind was tearing itself apart right now out of sheer loneliness. If that was the case, that was far too typical of an answer for her.  
  
She didn’t want to be seen as such a desperate girl. Uncool. Embarrassing. Lame. Lame. Lame.

There was one person in the world who after seeing her true self, genuinely wished to be by her side. Who wanted to keep looking at her true self. She felt like driving him away. Rather, she felt like it was inevitable that he would be driven away. It’s better to destroy it then let it disappear gradually.  
  
When she made promises of the future, when she tried to look forward to the future or think about it with someone she immediately wanted to ruin it. It was dumb trying to be nice when she was such a mean girl at heart.  
  
Did she even want to cheer Kumagawa up? Did she want to see him smile? Did she want him to go back to being interesting? What would she do the moment he recovered and he started acting like his interesting old self would she break him all over again and repeat the cycle? Did she ever know why she did the things she did or was she simply pretending to know.

“Why are you looking at me with such hurt eyes? Why do you always… look at me… there are some things even I don’t understand.”

『I want to talk to Junko okay. I know you’re just lashing out because your brain is stressed, but that’s not going to fix anything.』  
  
“Did you really think she would stick around for all this hurt and comfort nonsense? Yeah that’s definitely the kind of slow burn story that needs Enoshima Junko in it. Well, maybe if all of this healing ends with a big explosion, rocks fall and everybody dies ending. I’m a huge fan of the endings where the characters think they’re going to live, but they’re really headed to a Final Death-tination!”

『Junko, it’ll be more interesting if we talk. Things seem like they’re collapsing right now because you’re stuck inside your own head. We’re going back on what we said earlier, th-this isn’t some repetitive teen drama where we fight over the same issues over and over again you hate those kind of predictable shows that only maintain the status queue. To beat the status queue we have to change in a way we can’t reset.』

“They say people's lives don’t come with reset buttons like all fiction, but I’m not a people. Whether it’s soft resets or hard rests, I can do as I please.”

『Junko n-no, resets. We’re never going to reset again. That’s why I’m trying so hard...』Kumagawa’s eyes seemed to sink. Further and further down. A darker blue. The fish that rotted at the bottom of the ocean. Suddenly, the muscles that had pulled tight in his face, the trembling in his body they all disappeared at once. A smile spread on his lips. 『Oh, Junko if you remember seven years in the simulation does that make you mentally twenty five years old now?』  
  
“Nooooooooo! Don’t mention that. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. I’m forever seventeen!”  
  
Junko’s genuine voice came back. As she did she clutched her head and fell backwards on the bed, like somebody had dumped a bucket of fresh water on the witch.  
  
『Junko you said all those things to hurt me, if you end up getting hurt by something I said isn’t that just too bad….』He did not feel like he was being a good conversational partner. They weren’t bantering at all. Banter was the ultimate form of romance. He had just been hurt and confused the entire time, even though he should not be confused, even though he knew what Junko was like. That was what he got for always stumbling into things without thinking ahead first. Kumagawa

He suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders pushing her across the bed. There was anger in his actions she could feel it. Kumagawa always touched her body like she was some soft and delicate thing. He was violent by nature but he always seemed to repress it around her. Even the few times she wished he would break her just to taste the despair of it, he held himself back.  
  
She recognized the face he was making right now. The same unpleasant face he made after coming back from the dead and talking with Ajimu. She had reached deep inside of him into the watery depths and pulled his ugliest emotions to the surface. There was a reason deep sea fish looked so ugly, they were never meant to be seen by the light.  
  
Except she never one thought of Kumagawa’s face as ugly. His pain and suffering was so beautiful, just thinking about his attitude of never giving in when it came to facing the successive tragedies of his life made a hot white emotion shoot right through her. However at this moment she felt no warmth at all from him.  He seemed so much more alive than anybody else she had ever met, and especially herself. He kept staring at her. Actually, she knew she was the most attractive person on earth but what was with all the staring, and actually she did not like being looked at that much. She could see herself reflecting back in his eyes. The self she did not want to look at, the self she would splinter her mind to avoid.  
  
She was going to drown in that gaze. She started to fidget unnerved. When she tried to move though his one unbroken hand was holding her too tight, to the point of pain on her shoulder. He really was strong, That was exactly what made the idea of breaking him so interesting. No, she was trying to fix him… did she even know how to fix somebody? That time she acknowledge Mukuro as her family, and that time she had helped Yasuke after his mother both of those were just manipulations. She was the unnecessary element here she would sit here until her brain rotted.  
  
She would continue gazing herself and see nothing at all, and then she would scoop out her eyes with a spoon. She felt fear for the first time at such a boring ending. “H-hey, Misogi I was just kidding around. You know how I say ‘die’ all the time, that’s just silly banter. I'm totally not a murder, except for all those people I murdered. I'm not seriously a murderer though, just comedically one.”

『...』

“I just wanted to see what face you would show me okay?”

『...』

  
“M-monokuma took me over. I can’t believe him he’s such a scamp, but I guess that mischievous personality is what makes him a good mascot.”

She wondered when she had let desperation creep into her voice so easily. Was that a manipulation too to get Kumagawa off of her? Was she genuinely afraid? Kumagawa suddenly shifted and Junko closed her eyes, expecting him to finally retalliate his anger on her. Well, she was pretty good at applying makeup so even if she did not have a face she could probably just paint one on her.

『It’s scary isn’t it? Losing sight of your true self? Reaching a point where you no longer remember if your feelings are sincere or if you’re faking them? You’re really scared right now aren’t you?』

All Kumagawa had done was wrap his one arm around her. She was suddenly surrounded by his warmth. She wondered where all that anger had gone a moment ago, but she was too busy feeling every bit of his embrace to care.  
  
Perhaps, Junko thought she was just some kind of addict. She got addicted to people though, rather than to any substance. She took as many hits as she could off of them until she wore herself out on them and then threw them away. But she did not ever want to lose interest in this one boy.  
  
Was that possible? Could the girl who felt entitled to the whole world be allowed that one tiny thing? For her to always remain interested in this one person. This incredibly weak existence. She felt it, his own trembling body, his wn weak heartbeat, every single one she felt like her own.

『You don’t know if you meant all those things you said yesterday, just that you have no qualms at all about destroying whatever progress I made just to taste a momentary despair. Hey Junko, I know how you’re feeling right now. Not knowing who I was made me unspeakably afraid. I promised didn’t I? Even when you lost sight of yourself I would be able to see you.』  
  
“I just wanted… it made me feel… the pain of being apart from you, the soothing joy of your touch. The happiness of looking forward to the future with you, the fear of losing you… it made me feel.”

『Alive right? Living without feeling alive must have been so tough all this time. But you are alive, can’t you feel it. Even though it’s weak and faint. That’s your own heart beating.』  
  
She was jealous really. When she purposefully stomped and hurt Kumagawa’s feelings, the hatred and pain on his face was so undeniably real. She wondered if she would ever be able to feel so much. Even ripping away those precious people from herself she did not think she felt a fraction of what Kumagawa did on a daily basis.

She wondered when she had become so needy, to need to be held and comforted by a man like this. No, she had always been this needy from the start. Because she had been born lacking in several things a human needed.  
  
As she was held by Kumagawa she did as she said, closing her eyes and focusing only on the sound of her own heartbeat, of the warmth of him around her. Slowly, her trembling stopped, and she stopped feeling the urge to talk to Junkai again.  
  
If they stayed like this it might not be so bad. A world that consisted of only the two of them. If they were always this close then Kumagawa could never go away from her again, neither of them would disappear back to that island. Her whole world was contained in the warmth of Kumagawa’s chest melting the world of ice, the noises from his breathing drowned out the noises of the rest of the world.  
  
After a while she muttered in a sleepy almost dream like voice. “I wonder how long this pattern can continue, getting closer, feeling the need to hurt you every time I comfort you. I wonder when one of us is going to get tired of this…”

『Don’t worry Junko, I’ll make sure you never lose interest.』

He let go then, that was not what he wanted. Kumagawa smiled innocently at her like a child who did not know any better. He reached into his sling and pinched his fingers around his wrist.

『If you get tired of something we can just destroy it, if you get bored of the current me I’ll change. There’s no way you can break me that I haven’t been broken.』  
  
As Kumagawa said this, she heard the sound of another string snapping.  
No that was the crunch of his bones.  
He really did not have that many strings holding him back any more he should be less reckless.  
His two fingers on his unbroken hand now became broken.  
  
Why was this happening again? She had not intended for him to self harm.  
_Oh, it’s because we make each other miserable._ _  
_ _That’s why we’re both hurting._ _  
_ _That’s the summary of our entire relationship._

This is what Junko wanted in the end. She did not want stable ground, she wanted them to be standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean being tossed back and forth by the waves because she did not ever want to settle for one moment. If they were anything else but that she might be bored. Feeling like they might capsize at any moment.  
  
He was just trying to do what she wanted.  
This was her fault.  
She realized as she heard the sound of more of him breaking.  
  
Her mouth fell open to tell him to stop. To fix it somehow. But how? She could not fix only break.  
  
At that moment a dark hand appeared from nowhere and grabbed Kumagawa on the shoulder. “Really child, you’re going to break yourself further? I didn’t know you had all that money flowing around for medical bills. Who’s going to pay that…I wonder.”

『Umm… Kaiki-kun...how are you even here?』  
  
“We’re staying at the same hotel, and that girl is really loud I heard her from a floor up.” Kaiki said. “It’s not like I came to check on you or anything.”

Adult tsunderes really are boring, there’s no way Kumagawa would buy that weak level Tsundereing.

『Oh, you didn't come to check on me what a relief. I was scared you might care about me for a moment there.』

He totally bought it!

 

😈

 

Kumagawa had been dragged to a sink. No emotion betrayed on his face at all, Kaiki turned on the cold water and ran Kumagawa’s fingers swollen at the knuckle udnerneath them. He left for a moment fishing coins out of his wallet and returned with a bucket of ice from the ice machine.  
  
Kaiki shoved his hand into the ice and then stared at Kumagawa. The eyes of a dead bird met the eyes of a dead fish. Typically bird ate fish. Kumagawa did not know what to say.  
  
If asked he could not explain what had been going through his mind a moment ago. Just like Junko lost track of herself now, he seemed to do it all the time. As a way to escape pain, as a way to escape feelings that would overwhelm him if he confronted them.  
  
Damming up a river meant that sticks, twigs, fallen leaves, mud everything would slowly collect. Until over time the river’s water corrupted and turned completely ptich black. He had wanted to avoid such a thing his entire life. It was almost like a joke, the boy who dealt with more trauma than anyone else never actually dealt with that trauma. Feel free to laugh at Kumagawa’s life because he will be laughing with you.

Kumagawa did not even need to look at Kaiki’s eyes, he could already tell what memories were replaying through them. There was once a boy with white hair who had let it grow so long it almost dragged across the floor, it was so thick and dirty that it knotted and tangled into ugly clumps.  
  
That day just by chance he had saw a dead body in the place where he usually slept amongst the trash. It terrified him, not the idea that he might become like that. If that was so why had he been born, why had he lived his life up until this point, if he was going to be nothing more than an unmoving corpse. Reject, reject, he rejected that whole image and ran away from it.  
  
He ran, ran, ran from whatever it was that was causing him pain. It was the woel world. He stumbled along seeing people and seeing their hands that would hit him, their feet that would kick him, their mouths that would bite onto him, their eyes that refused to look at him after inflicting so much pain. He saw all of that and he ran. He wanted to run away from the whole world. When he stumbled, he saw blood on his pant legs, but did not bother. Even when his ankle rolled and made a terrible noise he kept running.  
  
The people around him all he saw was pink and blue. The color of blood. The color of the bruises they would leave on his skin. The color that would be all that was left of him. He tried to look away, but that and everything else shattered. His entire world was fragmenting apart. It was like he was looking at it through cracks in his eyeballs.  
  
He finally saw at the end of where he had run, the abandoned and overgrown path a shrine. The shrine looked broken down just like him. He thought it would probably be okay if he slept here a few days. He just needed to hide, to hide away from the rest of the world. He wated to go where nobody would be and nobody would find him.  
  
That boy with the matted white hair curled up into a corner and hid. The next few days, he got the break from people, from people who could hurt him, shelter from the storms known as human beings that he wanted. Then some children came to the shrine to play. Kumagawa decided to scream to scare them away.  
  
He almost felt bad about it, but he had no idea what emotions those children were showing him. The faces of human beings all looked the same to him. No matter what faces they made, they all eventually seemed to lead to anger towards him. He stopped being able to tell the difference a long time ago.

Apparently, his actions in scaring them away started a rumor. That rumor grew into a scary story people whispered amongst each other, and then a week later a specialist was called.  
  
That was how Deishuu Kaiki appeared before him. When he saw that the white haired blue eyed snake demon that was supposedly inhabiting the shrine was nothing more than a feral looking child he hesitated. _Did you come here to die._ The boy said with a smile. **Yeah, something like that. Do your parents know you’re here?** _No._ **Should they? What are you doing pretending to be a demon. I’m pretending to be an exorcist. We can’t both be lying.** _Who said I was pretending._ **Hey… are you?**

At that moment he forgot about the situation, and forgot about the money he was being paid. That child had looked scary at first but he saw now the child was emaciated to the point of starvation, his hair had overgrown, and his clothes were rags that barely fit him. It was not the child that looked inhuman, it looked like inhuman things had been done to the child. **Hey… are you?** He reached forward only for the child to back away from him.   _Hey… don’t touch me you’ll die for real. This is why I have to live like this. If you touch me you’ll get cursed like me._ **Thee’s no such thing as curses.** _You can’t say that. I’ve seen it. Everybody dies._ **That’s generally how the world works yes. Hey, look at me.** _I don’t get it why are you so close to me? Are you strong?_ **Who bought you such cheap clothing? They’re filled with holes. Did you lose your shoes? Do you have any money to buy a new pair? Hey… Iisten, there’s no such thing as curses because I’m a supernatural specialist. I’ve been paid to come help you with that curse of yours.**

A lie.  
The people of the town had paid him to chase off the horrible demon. The moment he had seen that child though he had gone out of his way to lie. Well, he was a con man. He could get his money whether he did the job or not. In fact it was easier if he accepted the money and just never did the work of driving out the demon.  
  
He reached forward and brushed a hair out of the kid’s eyes. Two blue eyes. They reeked heavily of smething foul, they loked like death. No, that was wrong it looked like this kid had seen too much death. It was just some kid. When Kaiki stopped to look at him in the eye, he saw the confused look in the kid’s eyes. Had nobody ever even looked him in the eye before this. He reached forward, trying to touch the kid’s hand but he drew back again. Even when he offered it, it looked like some alien gesture. Like nobody had touched him before. Like he had no idea how to hold a hand. _Can I not stay here anymore mister? Boo, this is the first place I’ve slept in with a roof in awhile._ **What happened to your parents?** _I remember… or I forget actually, sorry my memory’s real bad. When people hurt me it’s easier to forget._ **Did someone hurt you?** _Yes. Maybe… Hmm, I think I may have felt really hurt at some point, but it’s been a lot nicer since coming to that temple._ **Listen, you can stay at this temple but I’m coming back tomorrow. I’m going to do the hundred times worship here at this shrine. Is there anything I can bring you as an offering.** _I… I like manga…._ **What about food?** _I’d rather starve then not be able to read manga._

This kid is stupid.  
He’s insane.  
What an airhead.  
Those thoughts ran through his head at once.  
  
Yet he reached out finally and managed to grip the kid's hand. When Kaiki saw how long and awkward his own fingers were around the little boys, like somebody had taken a piano player's hands and then stretched the fingers in a taffy machine as they slowly tried to tcurl around the boy and take hold he thought. Ah. He really did not know how to hold the hands of another either.   
  
He offered a small smile. It was hollow, and showed  the corners of his pointed teeth. Kaiki immediately regretted it the moment after he tried. He probably only scared the child.  
  
Kumagawa just thought it was strange. He had seen people smile because they hurt him before, but never a person smile as they took his hand. People must smile for all sorts of reasons. 

He resolved he would visit the temple the next day and as many days as he needed to.  
That boy looked much to fragile to live on his own.

Saving a child like that trapped in that situation, all alone seemed to be something one should do without thinking. Before he knew it, Kaiki had stopped simply visiting the shrine every day. Instead, when he moved from place to place, he had a white haired child at his side instead.

Saving others should come natural.  
One should think of others before themselves.  
Saving others is a good thing.  
  
There was a reason Kaiki hated reckless platitudes like that. It was because he knew from experience, that saving others meant taking responsibility for the people that you saved. Saving someone was not something that happened once, like pushing a child out of the way of a speeding car. It needed to happen over and over again.

 **Kumagawa, why did you get into that fight?** _He said you took money from his parents. I wanted to do something for you, because you take care of me all the time._ **I told you. The person who sent me that day is paying me to take care of you. It’s already taken care of and paid for you owe me nothing.** _No, I have to. I have to make sure you stick around. I have to protect what I have now._ **Kumagawa. That child’s nose caved in, he’s going to need surgery.** _I’m sorry. I’ll make up for it. I can show you._

At that moment Kaiki heard the noise of a child’s bone crunching, as he grabbed his own fingers and broke them. Was it his fault for lecturing him? No he needed to lecture that child because he was only going to get into more fights if he did not. He did not see a finger bent beyond repair, all he saw was a crack appearing in a fragile thing.  
  
So fragile.  
Yet he he was handling it so carelessly. This was his fault for trying to save someone without understanding what saving meant.  
  
**Kumagawa why are you always fighting?** _I want to make you happy._ **If you want to make me happy get me some money.** _Okay if that’s what you want I know how to steal some._ **That’s not what I meant.** _You… You’re always… You’re always saving  me. I just wanted to._

Saving others?  
How laughable. There was not a single thing he could do for this child.  
His clumsy attempts to save him had only made him worse. He was giving the child cause to hurt himself. He considered himself clever more so than most people but he realized in that moment he had no idea how to handle this child or deal with what had been done to him.

 **I didn’t save you. Plese don’t… I didn’t…Humans can’t save other humans.** Kaiki said, his voice cold as he forcibly deadened his emotions.  
  
In the present time Kaiki had finished icing the two broken fingers on Kumagawa’s other hand. As the swelling went down, he realized they had not been broken merely dislocated. He warned the boy of the pain and the swiftly popped them back into their joints.

“Ahhh, so by breaking your finger did you manage to save that girl? Was it worth it? You've gotten quite strong and manly but your bones are still weak aren't they?”

『...』  
  
“Come on these philosophical debates are no fun unless you argue your point. Just because we’re both nihilists doesn’t mean we can’t talk, the nihil none in nihilist doesn’t mean nothing to say.”

『Kaiki-kun why do you hate saving others so much?』  
  
“I rather like my body in tact. It’s hard enough staying alive with the number of people I’ve swindled. I dislike pain, and I don’t like fighting. There are plenty of reasons not to stick my neck out for the sake of others.” Kaiki said, without an ounce of shame. “Besides, I don’t see how breaking your fingers is saving others. You were just hurting yourself. You might say this is for the sake of others to give you motivation, but humans can ultimately only act for themselves.”

『Then why are you helping my fingers right now? Why did you show up suddenly?』  
  
“I was paid to babysit you that’s all. I’m helping myself to the money I’ll make by taking care of you.”

『Kaiki-kun you don’t just hate saving others. You hate people who save others. Do you hate me?』  
  
“If you want me to like you start paying me. I like money everything else I’m indifferent to.”

『Kaiki-kun it just seems like you’re afraid. That you can’t save others. That you’re not good enough. That you’re not as good as the people who save others.』

“It’s not like youre good enough to save others either. You’re in pieces. What has that accomplished? That girl is as much of a mess as ever. She’ll just keep doing the same thing again.”

『Then I’ll keep trying. I’m not afraid to try. I think that’s what the difference is. Kaiki-kun, I’m sorry for making you afraid. I actually care about your feelings. Oh, but that’s just a lie.』  
  
“I care about your feelings as well. Because I’m paid to care. So that’s a lie as well.”

『I see then we’re not making up.』  
  
“Yes, we finally agree. We’re both agreeing not to make up.”

『Amazing how neither of us are lying in this moment. I suppose it’s what you’d come to expect of such honest characters like us. Do you think people ever get tired of how pure, nice and wholesome we are?』  
  
Kaiki did not laugh at the joke, but he did finally stand up. “You know, that girl has the strangest way of begging for attention. You don’t have to demonstrate that you’ll save her, not everybody wants to be saved. Some people simply want you to stay by their sides.”

『How would you know that? You’re just a pathetic lonely old man.』  
  
“I wasn’t by the side of the person I loved when I wanted to be, and I regretted it.”

『Oh, is that why you’re so pathetic?』  
  
“Yes,” Once again speaking with no shame at all, “That’s indeed why. I'm quite proud of this pathetic nature of mine though, people who take pity on me are less likely to suspect me of lying.”

After that Kaiki skulked back to his coffin, or wherever else he slept at night. Kumagawa walked back to his room, to see Junko had buried herself in all the stuffed bears she bought the other day on the floor. She bear-ied herself.  
  
Kumagawa sat at the edge of the bed and poked her back. 『Junko, how’s your existential crisis going?』  
  
“I’m in the middle of my third one. I got bored of the first two. Horror at your own existence and your slipping grasp of reality gets boring surprisingly fast.”  
  
『Why are you on the floor?』  
  
"I got bored of the bed."

『I see. I see.』Kumagawa reached forward to pet at her hair.  
  
 The moment he did, her claws wrapped around his hand and dug into his skin. "Princess carry me to the bed."  
  
『I only have one arm.』  
  
"So do I. Now we're matching." 

『No mercy as usual from the despair sisters.』He walked over to her and looped his hand underneath her arms. She wrapped her hands around his neck and as she asked he carried her all the way to the bed. The moment he sat down she did not get off, she merely wrapped herself around him even more.   
  
As if trying to tie a not, of red string around his neck. That no amount of snapping would be able to sever the string.   
  
“Misogi you know, Mukuro and Matsuda they both… they started to change on their own without me. They’re making steps to living on their own. If you start to be able to live on your own, are you going to go away too?”

『Gosh, if I cling onto you too much you’ll get bored of me, but if I go away you’ll get bored of being left all alone. You really are such a difficult girl.』  
  
“Honestly it’s just as difficult for me to be me. It's not easy being this beautiful and perfect you know, but I'm not sure how to explain that.” Junko said as she hid her face again. Glancing away, she asked a question she might not have been able to ask if she were not currently in the process of losing her mind. “Misogi have you… have you ever wanted me to just love you normally?”  
  
Words like that she usually swallowed. They trickled down her throat burning it as she tried to force it down. Even now though they had followed, trailing after her like she had spit them back up. They had all spilled out. She could see the black kanji spilling from her mouth one by one. They spilled out like she was spitting up all over the mattress right where Misogi could see. Disgusting.   
  
There was no taking them back now.  
She knew that.  
All the words she let past her lips tasted like lies, all of them with no exceptions.   
It's like she only ever said words to distort their meaning.   
There was not a single way for er to be satisfied, even when people offered everything to her.   
Everything went the way she wanted, but then again nothing went the way she wanted.  
She knew.  
She knew how worthless she was.   
That was why she knew it was only natural for her to be left behind. By this person who had found her when she was all alone.   
  
At that, Kuamgawa MIsogi laughed. When Enoshima Junko showed him a little bit of vulnerability, he laughed in her face. He laughed so hard there was spit flying in the air, he laughed so hard like he was making up for all the times previously that he had been unable to laugh. He laughed like it was a substitute for breathing, like he could continue the rest of his life laughing.

『I don’t think normal was an option for either of us.』

“Matsuda-kun said the best option was for us to break up before I devoured you.”

『We need to stop using devouring each other as a metaphor this isn’t the cannibalism manga. You know somebody told me that trying to stay miserable together with you was cowardly. That I wasn't trying.』  
  
“It’s like the whole world is telling us we’re wrong.”

『Hasn’t it always been that way? But you know Junko I feel most like myself when I’m with you so maybe it’s more like the whole world telling us we’re wrong for being ourselves.』

“What are you trying to do anyway…? Grow up? Leave me behind?”

『If it meant leaving you behind I just won't grow up.』  
  
“Then that’s selfish of me to demand that of you.”

『So what you’re the most selfish girl on earth. Entitled to the whole world. If you want something just ask, if you’re worried about something just tell me, if I think you’re wrong I’ll condemn you, if you’re going too far I’ll stop you.』

"Destroying the world didn't work out that well for me either. I'm not sure where else you can go from there, being with Kumagawa Misogi is basically the lowest of the low." 

『We can always go lower I'm always saying. We can reject it. The world rejected us, so let's reject it. Their definition, their meanings, their happiness, we'll reject all of it. 』  
  
"I have such a hard time understanding you. How come... its only you that's so confusing..."  
  
He wondered why it had to be that way with his words.   
They twisted and turned into heavy leaden lies in one moment and flew away like birds the next.   
Even the lies he told were an inconsistent mess.   
He was trying to find the words to save her but everything that came out of his mouth were worth less than dirt. He just wanted to bury it all away and forget about it.  
Forget he said a thing. Forget he said anything at all.   
He really did not think there was a single thing he could tell her to help her. There was nothing within him.  
If he were to write the summary of his whole existence he would leave that sheet blank. Nothing he could do for others. No place he had for others. Nothing in this world. That was what it meant to be pure white. Practically transparent.   
Even though there was nothing he could do for her.  
or for himself with a hopeless heart broken beyond repair.   
He had to keep going, because he wanted to keep walking alongside her.  
He had to keep letting out these clumsy words, all of them, all of them, all of them.   
Even if nothing was all their love would come to in the end.    
That's what humans did after all, they tried to define life over, over, over, over, and over again and then they just died. 

『I’m not even thinking that much of growing up. What I want is… to never ever get trapped in the past like we did on Jabberwock Island again. That’s all. I want to move forward. I’m just looking for a reason.』

“Too much self reflection makes you all moody though, and also too much self reflection destroys my mind. Which makes no sense because I’m like super hot so looking at my reflection should be amazing.”

『Hey Junko, we’re probably not going to be able to grow in the normal way, or what people consider healthy and we’re not going to stop bickering like this but you know… I think we can at least keep going. If we keep going maybe something good will happen.』  
  
“Or something bad.”

『That too. And for all the people who said it’s wrong of us to keep going in our own way. To keep trying on our terms. They say we're not trying but... I already know that you try harder than anyone else. You'd burn the whole world just to feel a little bit... you are trying in your own way. They just can't see it. They'll keep saying we're not trying no matter how hard we try. Then, we’ll keep going just to spite them. It’s true we are wrong according to the rest of the world, but since when have we cared what the world thought?』  
  
“Spite is as good of a motivator as any. The world is so boring, and every day is so tedious to push myself through. Just existing is trying.”  
  
『Awe yeah! All we need to do is keep living! The bar is set so low for human failures like us! We're too different from everybody else to use them as a guiding point. Let's just figure out it out by looking at each other.』

It was always push and pull like this.   
It was generous to say they were on a wooden boat in the waves. It was more like they were both adrift at sea. There was no landmarks or islands for miles. All they could see was the stretching expanse of the blue ocean. Every once in awhile one of them got pulled under. The other dove to save them, but when that happened they started to drown as well.   
Push and pull, back and forth.   
She could not comfort him without needing to be comforted immediately afterwards.  
She always ended up hurting him.   
Yet, he was so calm. There was something calming about the way the waves rocked them.   
It was unpredictable and interesting.   
When she was weak he suddenly became strong. When he became weak she was able to think of others for a little bit.  
She wondered how long this could last.   
One of them would tire of it eventually.  
And that thought made her just a little bit sad. It was such an empty feeling, a hollowed out despair.  
  
"That's a bad idea I'm an unreliable girl."

『If it's a bad idea I wouldn't have thought of it!』  
  
"Y...you really. You're fine with just me? The misery chick? Even though you want to be happy more than anyone else..."    
  
Junko wondered she really did.  
If she would be able to reach out to Kumagawa's emotions and put them into words the same way he always did hers.   
Perhaps if that was possible she would not be going crazy all on her own.   
  
『Junko I… I’m not doing this to leave you behind, because if one day you do really find something interesting about the world, if you start to find the world beautiful again then I… I want to be able to see your smile at that moment.』

“I… You won’t laugh?”

『I’ll be laughing with you.』


	21. No Enoshima is an Island

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Oakyvii on Tumblr

 

 I know everything.  
  
That woman had said so, with all of the confidence in the world. She had taken it all for herself. She had everything confidence.  
  
No that was dumb. That’s just like when Zenkichi says “Normal Cool” when what he really looks like is a “normal dork". 

The four of them had come to meet in the middle of broken construction site ruins. Apparently, this was going to be the building for a new cram school, but after their branch in a certain small town failed construction was halted and the project was left half finished. The second location never even came into being. It was like how the second location for Hope’s Peak was currently halted in construction after the first one started having troubles. That was the reason Munakata had not left Hope’s Peak anyway.  
  
Makoto suppressed a shiver at that name,  he tried to think about how Munakata had his own problems too, and reasons for what he was doing. His friends had come to this construction site several times once when Komaeda and Kumagawa, fought, and once when him and Zenkichi fought Komaeda and Kumagawa.  
  
Maybe he was a delinquent Makoto thought… trespassing on a construction site several times. He hoped he was not being a bad example for his younger sister.  
  
A set of stairs led up to the rough outline of a first ground floor, the flooring and cement had already been laid. It was comfortable enough just for the woman in long hip hop leggings, to stretch her legs out and lay down casually with an elbow holding her face up as she looked between four different tablets that were sprawled around her. Makoto wondered why she was bothering to sit there of all place, then he thought she probably just wanted a vantage point to look down on them no matter how small.  
  
Before he could even announced himself, she rolled her body to sit up, and kicked her legs so they were hanging off the edge. She waved causally. “Hey, Makyun. I’m glad we finally got to meet up.”  
  
_I’ve been promoted to Makyun. Or she finally settled on a nickname, what an indecisive adult._ _  
_ _  
_ It reminded Makoto of that popular scene in movies where the villain facing away from the camera turned around in their chair and said they had been expecting the main character all along.  
  
One of her tablets pinged heralding his arrival. She had rolled for the premium roll on the gacha and gotten the exact ultra rare unit she wanted. She turned it away and quickly grabbed a phone from one of her pockets, a flip phone. Without even looking she typed a message.  
  
“Well, that’s that. A quick message to Emukae. Saying I safely met up with Makyun and them, this is why I have her carry a cell phone for children.”  
  
She laughed at her own joke. Makoto wondered why he was even asked to meet her again. This woman seemed like she would be pretty satisfied just chatting with her reflection in the water forever.

“Okay, sorry to make you wait. Hello, Kurokami Medaka-san, and Mukurinrin.” She pulled her hat so far over her face that only her mouth could be seen. “I’m Izuko Oshino. You are familiar… with Oshino Meme? I’m his little sister.”  
  
“Actually none of us have any idea who that is.” Makoto said, ruining her joke.

“Oh wow, I’m a younger sister too. Are we going to meet this Oshino person sometime in the future? More friends to meet!”Kurokami Medaka. Who apparently had some relation to this woman, was thoroughly fooled.

Makoto wondered if it was hypocrisy on his part to worry about the naivete of someone else.  
Before asking her to this meeting, Makoto had warned her. “I don’t really know who this woman is, so it might be dangerous.”  
  
“Oh, if it’s dangerous then I’ll get to punch someone. If it’s not dangerous then that’s fine as well, because I won’t punch someone and therefore due to my pacifism the world can grow a little bit more peaceful.”  
  
There might have been a bit of foiling going on between Makoto’s lack of confidence in himself, but his reckless belief that things would work out for the sake of hope in the end, and Kurokami’s reckless confidence that she would overcome any situation she was faced with.  
  
Though, Makoto was not the type of person to think about character foiling and meta talk. He was too busy being a real person. “I thought your name was Gaen or something…”

“Jeez you really are an honest guy, huh? Now this scene is going to play out differently. Well it’s fine both unexpected and expected things are expected by me.”

 _Why do I always get stuck around people like this?_ Makoto wondered. Mukuro happened to be wondering the exact same thing at the exact same time. He knew this because she gave him a look that said very loudly ‘welcome to my life’.  
  
“My name is Gaen. Younger sister of your mother, Tsurubami Hato, Kurokami-san.”  
  
“Huh, if you were her younger sister than why is your name Gaen?” Kurokami asked.  
  
“Come on, this has already been covered. That bait and switch name game is a common device. Sorry you can’t get your head around it. For example, Ikusaba and Enoshima are sisters but it doesn’t really need to be explained why they have two different last names.”  
  
Ikusaba’s head tilted for a moment. Her positioning, her way of talking and what she said it was all so familiar to her. “Actually my mother’s name was-”

“See, it doesn’t need to be explained ee-heheheehehehehe!”  
  
Without prompting, Gaen suddenly burst into laughter. She laughed so carefree it looked like her mouth was taking up half her face, like she was imitating one of those phone emojis. “Well, my older sister, the middle brother, and me a pair of three siblings just like your little family Kurokami-san, they all had their share of personal complications but… That story won’t be told today. Well then, let’s get to the main subject, folks.”

Even with small interruptions like Makoto and Kurokami’s thoughtless questions, she seemed to have absolute control of the flow of the conversation. “I’m talking about business. First off, tell me the tales of the adventures that led you here. Tell me your entire story, down to the finest detail.” She held her arms open wide as if to embrace everything. “Big sister loves hearing stories about someone else’s life.”

There was no reason to gloss over things, so each one of them told their story. Mukuro of her infiltration of hope’s peak and its near destruction. Makoto of his life as a student, who was suddenly thrust into the position of becoming its savior. Medaka about Sandbox academy and it’s destruction and transferring to this school.  
  
“I’ll start with my conclusion. The culprit is Enoshima Junko.”  
  
“My sister, but where’s the logic in that? It’s not like we’ve been letting her do whatever she likes this time around, I’m trying to stop spoiling her so much at least.” Mukuro said, Makoto thought she must have been worried. That some part of her suspected in the back of her mind, that her previous belief that Enoshima’s plans were absolute like the programming of the world was right and that even all of them working together monitoring her could not throw them off. Even though she had made such a bold declaration that she would not only protect her sister from the world, but also protect the world from her sister.  
  
“The logic is the culprit is always Enoshima Junko, right? Even after it’s boring, even after everybody gets tired of it, even if it makes everybody say “What, this again?’ That’s my understanding.”  
  
Mukuro looked like she might say something else, but instead timidly hid behind Makoto grabbing his arm and burying her face in the back of his shoulder. “Makoto, tell her she doesn’t understand Junko at all. Tell her in a blunt and sadistic way that it can’t be Junko this time.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s Junko this time. You don’t understand-” Makoto was not sure about being blunt or sadistic, so he spoke up in his normal, timid nice guy way as that was the only way he knew.   
  
“Why? Why? Why?” Even staring with one eye showing Gaen was incessant.   
  
“Well, Junko’s not even…” Makoto’s voice trialed off.  
  
“What do you think I don’t understand say it more clearly. If there’s a misunderstanding you should correct someone. If you think you know more you should just say so. Just because I know everything doesn’t mean I know better…” Gaen said, somehow she still sounded pompous even trying to sound humble.  
  
It was not Makoto who spoke up but rather Medaka. “Makoto-senpai. Could she mean that, it’s not Junko’s direct planning this time that’s causing the trouble at the school but rather it traces back to her previous actions? Like the person took inspiration from her, or something?”  
  
“That’s right, Kurokami Medaka-san. That’s outstanding. In other words, whether Enoshima Junko is at fault has nothing to do with the actions or intentions of the original Enoshima Junko anymore. What we’re dealing with is a copycat who took inspiration from Enoshima Junko..”  
  
She stood up fully at this point. Her hands tucked in both of her pockets. Makoto even though they were standing in an abandoned site at night time, for some reason felt like three spotlights might converge on that woman at once. She really seemed to be at the genuine center of things unlike he who was at the edge. “Now, please observer. As I stated the conclusion first. I’ll go in order and explain chronologically. Let’s see, this probably starts at the beginning of the universe.”  
  
“Umm… are we going to be here for awhile?” Makoto interjected again, playing with his spiky bangs to remove them from his eyes.  
  
“Makyun, because of Kumagawa’s actions you were spared a trial where you had to listen to Junko rant about despair for three and a half hours, so I think in comparison to that having a friendly chat with the wonderful me isn’t that bad.” As she said that she stuck her tongue out to mock him.  
  
Makoto could make out a clear kanji character tattooed onto her tongue. ‘Zenbou’ in other words, ‘everything.’  
  
Gaen began her explanation. Apparently to everything, with a thought puzzle. “What does it mean that Ajimu Najimi claims to not exist? If she has memories of the beginning of the universe and being born, why does she think she’s imaginary?”  
  
As she casually began to contemplate Aimu Najimi’s eixstence. The girl appeared behind Gaen, and held a pair of rabbit ears behind her head. Gaen did not seem to notice, or was just ignoring her.  
  
Gaen continued to speak, by the time she turned her head to the side Ajimu was gone. “She was in my class in university too you know. Apparently, a lot of humans have memories of interacting with a Ajimu Najimi. The Non-Human who is Just Impartial. Let’s say for instance that she was just another myth that was passed around, like espers, time travelers and aliens."   
  
“So you’re saying we all made her up. I don’t think my imagination is that good. All of my original characters just end up being normal losers like me…” Makoto said, in a self deprecating way.

"No, I'm asking you a thought dilemna. Which came first? Did vampires exist and they were spotted by humans causing them to become myths around the world, or did the the many myths around the world that were told and retold, presuppose the existence of vampires and bring them into existence."   
  
“You’re really losing me here.” Makoto whined.

"Well there are two sorts of worlds to this world. There's the supernatural world, and the scientific. Like how in A Certain Magical Index, there are Espers and Magicians. I'm a supernatural specialist, but until this point you and Hope's Peak existed in the scientific world so it only makes sense this is new to you." 

"If you're trying to explain supernatural stuff beyond the realm of explanation then do we really need to explain it?" Makoto asked.   
  
"Mmm, maybe not but I do love hearing myself talk." 

Makoto thought so too, but also that it would be too mean to say it. 

"In college my group of friends split into two clubs, the research society and the occult society. Both of my siblings loved science so I grew fascinated with the occult to get away from them. I've always wondered this, what do you think is more real? The person or the stories surrounding them?"   
  
"Well people are people right...?" Makoto said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.   
  
"That's why I was thinking about Ajimu Najimi. She's so old she can be called the first aberration, the first supernatural being that doesn't make sense with the natural laws of the universe. Why does she exist though? Was she born from nothing? Did people like me and Kumagawa pass around stories about encounters with her enough to bring her into existence?"   
  
Makoto always felt out of place when they were dabbling in philosophy that extended beyond the hope vs despair two sides of the same coin dynamic.   
  
Gaen continued. “Ajimu Najimi possesses supernatural abilities called skills. Then afterwards skills started showing up in normal teenagers in the form of abnormalities. Kurokami-san’s abnormal learning skill, Ikusaba-san’s abnormal urge to kill, and your abnormal luck.”  
  
“Umm… I don’t think I deserve to be in the same category as those two. I’m just an unlucky dude.” Makoto said sheepishly.  
  
“No, wait. I’m not just talking about your position as the Ultimate Lucky Student. I’m saying this based off of you as an individual looking at all your recent behavior. You are odd. I know that. You don’t understand what I’m talking about? You will soon.”  
  
“I'll know how odd I am soon? Why? Is someone going to make fun of me?"  Makoto's antannae twitched with his nerves.   
  
“Ajimu Najimi has an ability to give other people skills and transfer them, so is the sudden appearance of skills in humans the result of her giving them out? Are the powers a manifestation of adolescence? Or, were enough stories about teenagers gaining super powers in high school told that it became accepted into the collective subconscious."  
  
“Umm…. I don’t think we should confuse anime for real life. We’re already dealing with so many problems I don’t want to revisit old stuff from two arcs ago.” Makoto said, interrupting again.  
  
“I'm simply suggesting that stories and reality have a looser boundary line than you might believe. For example, is there really such a thing as good or bad luck? Or when improbably events happen do you just assign those labels to them."   
  
Makoto brushed back his spiky hair finally. Even after getting it cut it was still a bit of a mess and he felt bad for averting his eyes, he never wanted to do that again like he had in the past. “I’m still not sure how I got here, I don’t think my self reflection abilities are as good as you guys but… meeting Mukuro was definitely good luck so I think my perception matters.”

At that, Izuko Gaen smiled. She threw her hands behind her back, as if to throw a cape back dramatically. Except she was not wearing the cape. She was so committed to the action though that Makoto could almost see it. Flutter flutter, flutter flutter, what a cool cape.  
  
“There are supernatural events in this world, there are possible explanations for their origins but we’re still affected by them. To jump ahead Ajimu Najimi encountered two humans, Shiranui Hanten and Kumagawa Misogi. Then the story continued seven years ago when Kumagawa was thirteen. No, it started last year when Hope’s Peak was about to end.”  
  
“Are you going to say this is Kumagawa’s fault? That all of this happening again is because he undid the damage to Hope’s Peak in the first place, so it’s being redone? Like some kind of corrective force? There’s no way that’s true there’s no such thing as fate!”

“You're so much more confident when speaking for a friend, Makyun. Nope. Kumagawa, well I know he would say 'It's not my fault.' In fact, I never expected Hope’s Peak to end to begin with… but there ended up being all sorts of miscalculations.”  
  
“MIscalculations?” Makoto asked, he was never really good at math and he felt like this explanation was going to make his head hurt just as much.

At that moment the woman drew her hands out of her pockets. Instead of phones she was now carrying two paper dolls. One of them looked exactly like the image of the old Enoshima Junko, the one Makoto had known during his first year of high school, the other of Kumagawa Misogi when he first transferred in and still wore his suisou uniform. She suddenly laid down and bean to puppet them around.  
  
“There were all sorts of projects studying and trying to create geniuses, the Kamukura Project, the flask plan, there were even special geniuses that were created by breeding, Kurokami Medaka, Byakuya Togami, Aikawa Jun, Kunagisa Tomo. However, Enoshima Junko is a wild type. She was born smarter than any of those concentrated breeding efforts, even Ajimu Najimi who searches for impossibility failed to notice her until Kumagwa did."  
  
“So this does trace back to Junko? You’re saying Junko’s existence was so unexpected it unraveled your plans?”  
  
“No, no, that story's already finished. I was just highlighting what a unique and unexpected character she was. Makyun, I ask again what's more real to you, there's a living breathing Ajimu Najimi, and then there's the story surrounding her. For Junko it's the same thing, a story of the girl who rose up to destroy the world."  
  
“I can think of better character concepts.” Makoto muttered under his breath barely concealing his loathing. I congratulate the sunshine boy for joining the ranks of the bitter, as his bitter senpai I’ll take care of him.

“Mm, well why Kumagawa decided to transfer to Hope’s Peak instead of sandbox, there’s not really a big conspiracy behind it. It really was just on his whim, a coincidence. the girl Shiranui appeared before him because she went looking for Saki-chan on that day, and then asked him to do it instead. He could have turned her down.”  
  
“I don’t think Kumagawa-senpai ever turns anybody down when they go to him for help.” Makoto said honestly, once again not hiding his positivity for such a negative existence.

“However, there’s a reason Shiranui was the only one who knew about Junko’s activities. While the rest of us were busy looking elsewhere, there was a party that had caught onto Junko’s activity. Their intention wasn’t to stop her, just to continue observing.”

“How could they observe her? How would they even know? And please don’t just say  ‘they know everything’ because that’s not really an explanation it just sounds cool.” Makoto said. If he wasn’t getting the chance to be cool, then no one was, damnit!

Izuko gaen made a loop with her thumb and index finger and circled it around her eye. “Through the surveillance cameras. If you were watching like that, then the school where all the world's talent is gathered could be like an anime and Junko a favorite character who demands the spotlight."   
  
“I can’t see how Junko would ever be anybody’s favorite character at all.” Makoto frowned again. “Really what kind of bad taste are we dealing with.”

“So this person fell in love with the story of Junko, rather than the person. They were watching the destruction of Hope’s Peak like a thrilling drama, and then. Suddenly it stopped. Kumagawa transferred and it became a totally different story. Happy ending.”

“Awe, I think Kumagawa would be really happy if he heard somebody finally say that something he did led to a happy ending. People are so rough on him even though he tries so hard.” At the mention of Kumagawa he smiled again. Makoto was probably the only person in the world optimistic enough to smile at Kumagawa’s name. How sweet.  
  
Gaen picked up her Kumagawa and Junko doll, making them fight by smacking them against each other, and then kiss with the same motion.  “Anyway, a tragedy where at last minute all tragedy is averted by Deus Ex Machina is no fun, at least in that person's eyes. So they want to correct the story of Enoshima Junko, what matters most is their perception of her not the real life person."

“So basically somebody’s being delusional and their delusion is liking Enoshima Junko? I can’t imagine being that insane…” Makoto said. He really did not like that girl. She was the only person that overly agreeable boy disagreed with.  
  
Gaen found a second Junko paper doll, and held it in the opposite hand while she moved Kumagawa and Junko to the same hand. “That’s the best explanation I’ve drawn. There’s Ajimu Najimi the person, and then there’s the idea of Ajimu Najimi. There’s Enoshima Junko the person, and the idea of her. This person believes they can make the idea, realer than the reality. It’s like uhh, death of the author right?”  
  
“She’s going to try to kill Toko-chan?” Makoto really did not get this meta talk.  
  
“No, death of the author. They believe their interpretation of Junko is more real than the original. They must believe themselves to be her successor.”  
  
“Then what about styles! I was given a fever and cut up out of nowhere. Why do they have supernatural abilities like that?” Mukuro finally spoke up again resting her chin on Makoto’s shoulder to overcome her timidity. She was quiet around strangers by default, but for some reason this woman had an uncomfortable aura that activated her default puppy response.

  
“Hmm, okay you know after you make five hundred series about children in high school with super powers getting into fights it gets kind of old right, so sometimes shows will start to get meta to try to shake things up?”  
  
“What does that have to do with anything? Jeez, why does every super genius girl I come into contact with also happen to be an anime nerd. I don’t want to get made fun of for being a military otaku anymore.” Mukuro whined while still leaning her weight against Naegi.  
  
“It’s nothing like that, it's just a metaphor. And obviously I'm not an otaku, I'm cool, look at this hip angle I'm wearing my hat at. I'm just describing the evolution of stories. First there are aberrations, inhuman oddities, like the non-human Ajimu. Then there's humans who take on abnormal qualities but still remain human, abnormals."

  
“Oh, Oh I know can’t they also be called X Men? Did I get it right? Did I do the reference thing right?” Makoto was trying to be helpful and keep up.  
  
Gaen put her paper dolls down and rolled back her head. As she rolled back her head her tongue fell out of her mouth. “The more an oddity’s story is told, the more powerful it becomes. That’s what I suggested earlier. Tell a story enough times and it may become real, or at least you’ll believe it. That's why the language and story based styles were developed to manipulate those stories passed around. The role of us oddity specialists, Kaiki, Meme, Yodzuru and me of course is dealing with stories of the supernatural."  
  
“So, if you know all of that now why are you asking us for help? Can’t you just solve this on your own? Are you lazy like Junko is?” Makoto said, feeling a little bit stronger with Mukuro clinging to him like that. Perhaps if he had seen Junko’s real face under the original circumstances he’d be more fearful of her but to him, Junko was just a lazy brat who was mean to her sister.  
  
“The fact that I know everything doesn’t mean that everything will go my way  Especially involving you, Makyun. Someone like you who doesn’t move according to logic, someone whose activities are unpredictable, an aberrant youth. That’s why I came to the front lines to give you a chance.”  
  
Makoto wondered he really did why he always ended up at the center of these schemes. If they just wanted a puppet it could be anybody right? Perhaps that was his bad luck. “B-but me, shouldn’t you talk to Hinata-kun or…”

Gaen immediately say back up and dug around for more of her paper dolls. She found another one that was Makoto’s likeness of his first year, the same jersey uniform he always used to wear. “Makyun, haven’t you ever wondered about it? Why suddenly, after living an ordinary life you’ve had encounter, after encounter, of the extraordinary. You never thought it strange? That of all people, not Munakata, not Hinata, not Komaeda, not even Zenkichi it was you who ended up in Junko’s chosen nemesis?”  
  
“If I thought about it that way, wouldn’t I sound really self absorbed? Like, Woe is me? Why do I always end up at the center of these things?” Makoto raised his voice to defend himself. He had started to despise main characters like that.  
  
“Then after that, Kumagawa Misogi. Kurokami Medaka. And Ajimu Najimi all in succession all transferred to this school They all met you. It seems Makyun your train of thought is that something that happens to you could happen to anyone else. You’re so modest but even modesty has one major flaw."   
  
Flaw. Makoto looked down at his own hands and saw cracks appear. He had been noticing them more and more lately. 

“A huge flaw that always makes you say ‘You’re Wrong’ when someone tries to tell you how special you are. Even if it comes from the girl who loves you enough she’d betray the whole world for your sake.” Gaen as she said this looked over Makoto’s shoulder to find Mukuro, only to have the girl make a noise like a scared dog and hide away. “I’m sorry, I’m saying so many vague things. When I’m faced with a young man in high spirits like you Big sister here really wants to explain the meaning of life.”

It seemed she had gotten off topic trying to lecture him. Gaen clapped her hands together to refocus herself. “Well anyway, what they want is to gather all the old actors together and perform their favorite show all over again but this time with a revised ending. That’s why our chance revolves around you Mukurinrin.  
  
She pointed at Ikusaba Mukuro. Mukuro tried to stop hiding, detecting that this was important, raising her head and resting her chin on the top of Naegi’s head.  
  
“You’re the one that can make a difference. If you don’t kill again that’ll contradict your previous characterization. The Ikusaba Mukuro they see can only exist as a villain but you can be a hero."   
  
Kurokami Medaka had been listening obediently. Of the three present she was the most prone to following the rules. However, she spoke up again. “Wait, are you going to explain how you can change the events? Aren’t you an outsider?”  
  
“Well you see, besides my former associates from college Kirigiri-chan was one of them too. He joined our club to spurn his father. Then, he cut ties when he was finished with his supernatural phase. However, a bunch of happenings at his school that logic could not explain occurred and he contacted me again.” Gaen sat up again and then pulled a tablet free from a pile of tablets she was keeping behind her. She lined then up in a row, there were so many it looked impossible for her to keep track of them all at once but her eyes started to dart between them, and at the same time she texted on her flip phone without looking.  
  
“Oh, haha whoops. I definitely had nothing to do with that, I’d never cause supernatural shenanigans behind the principal’s back I’m a good girl.” Kurokami Medaka was still really bad at telling lies.  
  
“The job of everyone underneath me is to collect stories in the aftermath for me to analyze. My job is the opposite, accident prevention, I stop stories from being told in the first place.” As her finger finished scrolling on one of the tablets, she suddenly flipped it over.  
  
“You said that the situation exceeded your expectations? You plan that far ahead?" Kurokami Medaka prompted.  
  
“Right various specialists are now involved in this case for example I know that Kumagawa is currently under the care of Kaiki. Even still, I’m amazing, deducing all of that. So this time for sure, you know what the job I want to ask you to do is, right?” Gaen said, lookin away from Medaka and back to him. As she did she flicked her wrist and closed her cellphone again.  
  
There was only one thing Makoto could say. “Stopping Enoshima Junko?”    
  
“That’s your role as her natural enemy isn’t it, Makyun?” Gaen smiled at him. It looked like a smile that had been carved out of her face by a practiced knife rather than a natural smile.p  
  
“But she’s annoying and I don’t like her. Isn’t there someone else?” Makoto whined.  
  
“There is one who could defeat her in a traditional sense, like beating up a boss monster. I have a contact that specializes in killing, but I can’t control her. Things I can’t control are no good.”

Makoto’s vision lowered. “So you decided to go with me because I’m very agreeable, and usually just go along with whatever people tell me to do with no trouble.” He did not think he was particularly special, but at the same time he did not need to be reminded of how lame he was so often lately. Was the world trying to get him to develop of a complex or something.  
  
“If this is being set up like a story it'll have rules. If not, the events that spiral out afterwards will be impossible to control at that point I’ll have no choice but to call Yodzuru to crush them.”  
  
“Ummm…” _She speaks of this Yozduru like she’s some kind of inhumane weapon or something._ Makoto pictured some woman twice as muscular as Sakura destroying a city like godzilla. He felt Mukuro shivering behind him at the mention of that name and wondered if she pictured the same thing.

Then as suddenly as she had launched into the explanation she stopped. She looked like she had gotten bored, standing up and stretching. She did not even notice the tablets or cell phones she had left behind. Still stretching her arms about her back, Izuko Gaen began to walk away.  “Now big sister will step out a bit. If you get hungry, you can use this to go buy some breakfast, Makyun. You should go back and report in to your student council it’s not good to neglect your responsibilities. After this, I’ll meet up with you again when I’m going to give you your chance.”

However as she walked away Mukuro finally steeled herself to face what she had been hiding from this entire time. She rubbed her cheek on the back of Makoto’s spiky haired head to recharge herself  with Makoto energy then disengaged from him and rushed off after Gaen. “Why are you so similar to Junko? Do you have analysis like her? Do you have some relation to her?”  
  
“No, no, you’re overthinking things. We just both obsesses over different things, she likes to cause accidents and I like to prevent them. Were you worried I'd call her my natural enemy or something?” Gaen folded her hands behind her head and gave a casual shrug.  
  
“...Then if you know everything how did you underestimate Junko? If you both know everything shouldn’t you be even?” Mukuro wanted to figure out what was bothering her.  
  
“Well, it’s like math. There’s the concept of infinity, but you can also do two times infinity, and three times infinity. Even though infinity is supposed to be the biggest number, you can double it. We can understand everything the second we receive it, but our experiences differ. Enoshima didn’t even know the supernatural existed until she met Kumagwa.”  
  
“So then… my sister’s not going to turn out like some weirdo whose always stuck acting like a millennial, the same way you look like some weirdo out of the nineties!” Mukuro said, blunt and sadistically.  
  
“You’re a good big sister, Mukurin. Worrying about your younger sister, nothing like my big sister Hato at all. It's best if we never meet, Junko would like the idea of seeing herself as an adult.” Gaen offered her another smile. It was equally unnatural. Like somebody had carved ‘smile’ into a shogi piece. "Even though I'm a cool adult. Look at how many pants sag at just the right number of centimeters."   
  
“Yeah, my sister doesn’t really grow up she just turns into a bigger baby with age.”  
  
“It’s a good thing that we’ll never meet, because the moment we meet in person we’ll probably try to kill one another. Kurokami-san is very patient, able to forgive the existence of someone that’s so opposite to herself. You’re nothing like your mother at all.” As she made vague and frivolous comments like that, Izuko glanced over to Kurokami who was still sitting far away.  
  
Mukuro spoke up. “Umm… Are you okay, Izuko? You seem worried about Medaka-chan, and you tried to lie to her about your identity. Does it have something to do with your older sister?” That was it, what had been bothering her the entire time, a familiar fear she felt.  
  
“Have you heard of a clockwork orange?” Gaen said, seemingly changing the subject on a whim. Maybe she got bored.  
  
“A clockwork orange?” Mukuro remembered Junko mentioning it, ‘we’re totally going to torture Yukizome Chisa clockwork orange style, man i love brainwashing, nag nag nag, i’m so cool and full of myself and bored bored bored’ something like that Mukuro did not remember it clearly.  
  
Gaen grabbed at the sleeve of her loose fitting shirt. “In it the main character who is a deviant criminal isn’t reformed he is just given treatment akin to classical conditioning to make him averse to violence.”  
  
“Your sister did she…”  
  
Gaen started to run her mouth again. It seemed talking too much was her bad habit. “I don’t think it’s your fault your sister turned out the way she did. That can’t be anybody’s fault but her own. But let’s say Mukurinrin, every single time your sister had thought of hurting someone, you applied  _treatment_ to stop her from thinking that way."   
  
“...”  
  
“Let’s say then there is a natural tendency for those who develop the talent of analysis to want to throw things into chaos. So, your entire life you were conditioned to hate chaos as a treatment for this. Now you devote your life towards peace out of compulsion, is that a good result?" Gaen said, looking away still.  
  
“I can’t say that.” Even though Mukuro blamed herself for Junko, she had never thought about what might have happened if she went that far in trying to stop her sister.  
  
“There are two results, one was loved by her sister as a human being, and one was only ever seen as the potentially dangerous person she could be by her sister. You did the right thing and got the wrong result, she did the wrong thing and got the right result. It’s senseless, so don’t try to make sense of it by assigning blame to yourself.”

“My mother was she…” Kurokami finally spoke up.  
  
By that point, Gaen had already begun to walk away again. ”Well, enjoy your snack time on big sister’s dollar, kids. How many birthdays of yours did I miss, dear niece? I hope that makes up for it.”  
  
Makoto looked at the money that had been left in his hand before Gaen retreated. It was a single 100 yen coin. These adults that were suddenly interfering in their business were kind of all disasters, Makoto thought but he thought it was too mean to voice that thought.  
  
Well, when he used the machine he usually got two drinks for one coin on accident so he could get one for him and Mukuro at least.

😈

  
  
Munakata had been called to meet with Chisa in private. The meeting location was one of the steering committee’s offices, so he had to sneak in being only a teacher of a transfer class at best who was overstaying his welcome.  
  
The two of them stared at a computer screen with Shiranui’s student information on it. After months of making no progress at all in their investigation at Hope’s Peak, they had figured out how Kumagawa had managed to make it into the reserve course, and then temporarily sneak into the main course. It was the manipulations of someone named Shiranui. As they tried to investigate her student profile however, suddenly before their eyes the information on the computer began to delete itself.  
  
“Damn it all to hell a virus at this time!” At that exact moment, even though Munakata had snuck all the way here to find an important lead, he could not even remember what that lead was. “Really, what kind of deus ex machina is this.”  
  
“Deus ex Machina?” Chisa asked next to him, tilting her head.  
  
“It means god of the machine, in greek plays conflicts were typically resolved by the gods descending from a proper from on high to fix things.” He slammed his fist onto the keyboard. “Why are we even here, it feels like we’re irrelevant.”  
  
“Kyosuke.” Chisa said suddenly. “I asked you here so you could help me. That’s why we met up tonight.”  
  
Chisa reached out a hand towards his cheek, but Munakata immediately tensed up. He avoided her, walking away to the edge of the room.  
  
“Please… don’t ignore me I need your help.”  
  
Chisa’s hand was on his shoulder. He flinched and turned around his cold gaze focusing on her. He noticed the oddity in her behavior right away. They were both cooperating on trying to investigate Hope’s Peak together it was not like he was a knight in silver armor come to rescue her. She clung to his back… why was she clinging to him right now?  
  
“You’re the hope of this school. Everybody calls you the young hope, Munakata but you’re not trying very hard.” He felt her reach up to caress his face again as she said that, her hands were unusually cold.  
  
“I don’t know why Kumagawa keeps eluding me, but he’s the only lead we have. I’m trying. We’ll save the school soon.” He promised, just like the time he had held her crying in his arms during the first disaster.  
  
“No, it’s not about Kumagawa. It’s not even about the school. It’s too late for that now. That happened last year didn’t it? And you arrived too late. You’re always too late. Why aren’t you helping me?” Chisa Yukizome was bright, radiant like the sun, no matter how much him and Juzou had trouble communicating she always seemed to be able to pull them back together. Yet she was shivering against him now.  
  
“I’m trying… what do you mean helping you?”  
  
“When you were gone do you know what happened to me? Ikusaba Mukuro captured me and tortured me, she stuck rods in my brain and made me watch horrific things while peeling my eyes open. She’s the one who killed all those people not Kumagawa, you idiot. Yet, Naegi Makoto managed to cover it up to protect her, and you the hero can’t protect me.” At that moment she stopped hanging on to him for comfort. She let go and stumbled a few steps back adrift.  
  
“Yukizome, what… What happened? If… If you want to hold onto me that’s fine.”  
  
“Holding onto you doesn’t mean a thing when you won’t protect me! You won’t protect Juzo either! They call you this academy’s hope but you can’t protect a damn thing! You’re not even trying at this point!” She screamed at him, as her face descended into tears and hysteria. “I thought you wanted to go back to the good old days when we were classmates, that’s why you wanted to protect this school!”  
  
Munakata said nothing. That rejection burned him. He stumbled back and leaned himself against the wall for support. His ambition to become the principal in Kirigiri’s place, his want to open up a new branch, he thought that he had grown up and was trying to seize power but all he really wanted was to continue those days with the three of them together uninterrupted. All this time, they had been following him, willing to die for a man with such a selfish desire. “More than anything… That’s why I’m trying not to lose this time. I’m willing to do anything.”  
  
“Why aren’t you trying harder? You’re stronger than Makoto, you’re stronger than Jin, why are you holding back? If you had fought hard from the beginning, I would never have been taken, I would never have been violated like this.”  
  
“Yukizome, I didn’t know… If that really happened to you why are you still investigating like this? Go back to the hospital please and recover.”  
  
“Because I don’t have time to recover left. Ikusaba Mukuro told me she’s going to kill me soon to protect her secret. I’m so tired, it hurts so much, won’t you save me, Kyosuke? People can save other people, isn’t that hope?” She said aftering distancing herself from her looking over his shoulder to give one last sad look.  
  
Munakata felt she was going to disappear unless he did something. He was not used to this, the relationship between Juzo, Chisa, and him had always been so close and yet so unspoken. It was like each was a fundamental part of another’s world. His world was going to be taken away, he could see the fissures and the cracks of the earth in front of him. He pushed himself, jumped over the crack and pulled her into the embrace. It was true he had been called the young hope by this academy, he had imagined himself to be the savior that destroyed it’s corruption, that responsibility was well on his shoulders but he hardly cared about any of that right now. He did not want to see Chisa make such a sad face. He wanted to destroy whatever had caused such despair to appear in his eyes. “I’ll destroy it, Chisa. Whatever makes you unhappy, I’ll destroy all of it. I’m sorry I was scared to fight, but this time I’ll fight with everything I have. Nothing in this world will threaten you ever again, I’ll destroy it before it gets the chance.”

Saving others.  
It was as simple as destroying whatever could be a threat to them. As long as you had strength, you could protect. This time for sure unlike the last time he knew what he was facing head on. He had an enemy to destroy. Not a faceless shadow he was fighting.   
In order for hope to take root.  
Despair needed to be destroyed.  
He just needed to kill them, it was so simple why did he not think of it before? What was holding him back? He really wasn’t trying before this point.

After Munakata left the room picking up his katana once more, Chisa when he was out of earshot broke into terrible, cackling laughter. “Puhuhuhu! Puhuhuhu! You think if he loved her so much he was willing to kill for her, he’d be able to tell his true love from an imposter.” She threw off her wig to reveal a second wig, of blonde hair.  
  
From the closet, a man in a half mask emerged. “Princess, was it really necessary to wear two wigs at the same time for the sake of that reveal?”  
  
“Shut up, I’m running this!” Nisenoshima said as she kicked the closet door shut on him.

😈

  
“Oh, Munakata’s here. An he’s standing on the table again. Do you want some coffee, the machine gave me three.” Makoto said as he opened the door to the student council office with Mukuro standing behind him.  
  
They had spent the entire night listening to Izuko’s long explanation and both of them were a bit sleepy now. He might have been late to student council duties, he hoped Munkata would not lecture him again.  
  
“Ah, so this is the school’s last hope.” Munakata walked along the desk’s of the student council, his footsteps heavy. “Even as we speak despair has influenced this school. Victim piles upon victim and you still want to continue acting out your slice of life romance? There’s a time and place for such selfishness but not now.”  
  
“So… you don’t want a coffee?” Makoto said, he thought becoming an adult was the end of drmaa. He wondered why every adult he knew was so dramatic.  
  
“Sakakura restrain him”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
Sakakura had been sitting down watching the other two enter. He stood up before either of them could move, and grabbed Naegi’s wrists locking cuffs around it.  
  
“Dear boy, you are under arrest for covering up the activities of the terrorist who infiltrated this school Ikusaba Mukuro.”  
  
“Sorry kid, I totally get being willing to do anything for someone but…” Juzo muttered under his breath, and before he could say anything in response he punched Makoto in the stomach as hard as he could.  
  
The words he wanted to say were spat out. He felt like vomiting kanji onto the floor. That would have been a more useful use of his voice than the nonsense he was always spouting. He collapsed to the floor, choking, unable to breathe, but when he saw Mukuro start to move behind him he suddenly found the words. “Don’t do anything, Mukuro!” He said, spitting blood as he did.  
  
Juzo reached for his shoulder. “Not having that woman fight your battle for you, you might not be the worst person ever but suck it up. On your feet now you son of a bitch.”

There was nobody else to intervene. Makoto remembered how beaten up Kumagawa always looked, and no matter what the situation he stood up on his own two feet with nobody helping him. Unlike him who was helped along by everyone. Izuko was right, he didn’t remember doing anything spectacular in the past, he just remembered feeling like he needed to do something because nobody else was doing it, or there were times that everybody in the class told him to do it and he just went along with it.  
  
He tried. He tried to get his legs to work, but his stomach pulled tight and he felt like he wanted to vomit blood. His body rocked with convulsions. He wanted to conceal his pain so Mukuro would not worry, but there was a trail of blood falling from his lips. Finally, Sakakura got impatient and grabbed him by the back of his collar hauling him up.  
  
“You knew all along who was the culprit behind the tragedy, and yet you hid it to yourself. That girl standing right behind you is a terrorist that killed countess faculty members and students.”  
  
“W..wait you don’t even know h-her side of the story. I’ll c-cut you a deal okay, you can do what you want with me but please hear me out about her.”  
  
“She is the enemy. You have more sympathy for her than you do her victims?”  
  
_How can I forgive her? I mean they didn’t come into the world the way she was. She had hopes and dreams. She never got the chance to talk about them with anyone but her sister, she deserved the chance to share those dreams with her friends as well._

He wanted to say that but he was coughing, and it was only Sakakura who held him up. “Listen kid, Munakata’s the school’s hope. He didn’t luck his way into the academy like you, he worked his whole damn life to get here, and then even after he graduated he came back to try to reform this school. Some crimes are just too serious, they need a serious guy like Munakata who can do what must be done.”  
_  
_ _What if two hopes could settle their differences and meet in the middle. Wouldn’t seeing them work together inspire an even greater hope?_

He wanted to say that but there was blood in his mouth, he was choking on his own tongue. Even though he was such a weak and helpless person though, Mukuro was still hiding behind him. Was she scared? She was… letting herself get protected by him. She had faith in him. That was right, she abandoned her sister’s despair and put everything into his hope so why couldn’t he?  
  
If Kumagawa were here  he would probably break his own wrists to get out of the handcuffs. Makoto tried, but he gave up when it hurt too much.  
  
“Say something dear boy, it’s already over for you so you could still say something so everybody else can be saved.”

 _If I told you what I know… Then they definitely wouldn’t be saved. Izuru, Komaeda, Kumagawa, Mukuro, and ugh… even Junko. Those people won’t be saved by a person like you._  

He wanted to spit in his face and act defiant like a real main character might in this moment. Except he was a hanged man, the only thing he could do is resign himself to his own helplessness. “Mukuro… Don’t… Do… Anything…”  
  
He was scared because he knew if she hurt someone, even to defend herself, what little stability she had managed to build for herself would shatter like glass. Perhaps it was karma or even justice that she finally get caught like this right when she had started to finally improve but he knew… Mukuro did not enjoy hurting people. She had killed herself, just as much as she did the others. Smashed herself again and again until there were only tiny pieces left.  
  
Mukuro stood silent behind him. If they did not fight back though they might both be killed here. Words… words, why couldn’t he… Why was the only thing good about him his luck?  
  
Just then the door to the student council office flew open. “Hey guys, sorry I’m in so early I have to walk to school early now because Medaka freaks out if I come with in fifteen meter radius of her. Huh?” Hitoyoshi Zenkichi tilted his head in mild surprise at the blood that was on the floor, the beaten up Makoto being held by Juuzou, and Munakata standing on a table. “Come on dude, we gotta wipe down those tables like every day because of you.”  
  
Nevermind, his luck was the greatest in the world! Hooray for luck! He loved getting helped by others! He wanted to have his hand held through the entire adventure! Holding hands with your friends was great anyway!  
  
Wait...   
  
Zenkichi had a skill that neutralized luck. His encounter here was neither good nor bad luck. Then how did he... did someone send him here? He spotted a cell phone in Zenkichi's pocket, just before the boy stripped his jacket off and threw it aside.   
  
In an instant Juzo was separated from Makoto by Zenkichi’s kick. Makoto had no legs to stand up, but gallantly, Zenkichi moved to catch him, and cradled the boy in his arms like a princess. “Sakakura! I didn’t know you wanted a rematch with me so badly! You must have heard the legends of a man who has the sickest of kicks, and a fighting style as cool as the devil!”

“I’ll give you one chance to back off, reserve course alum. You’re clearly a try hard out of your depth, Munakata knows what he’s talking about.”  
  
“Well, then I won’t be able to live up to my title as a try hard if I don’t try too hard. Mukuro, catch him and run!” He threw Naegi into the air, and then immediately jumped into a spinning kick hitting hard against Juzo as he held his hands in front of his face to dodge.  
  
Mukuro caught Naegi bridal style and then having successfully won this round of pass the Naegi, ran in the opposite direction. When that man hit Naegi, it had taken everything she had to simply stop herself from trying to kill him. She was biting down on her tongue so hard to retain consciousness she could taste blood too.  
  
She was not running out of her own sense of self preservation. She only wanted to make sure Naegi did not have to be dragged down with her. If she could let him escape she would surrender herself to Munakata and face what was coming to her.  
  
However as she turned the corner something dug into her shoulder. She looked back and saw Munakata had thrown a smaller blade at her. Oh, perhaps Pekoyama was right and she had started taking hits on purpose like Kumagawa always did. Even right now as she was desperately trying to escape, she was thinking about how she ought to just surrender.  
  
Holding Makoto up became too difficult and she tripped over her own foot, stumbling and spilling them both onto the floor. She saw Makoto roll still handcuffed and her eyes rolled over to see the puddle of pink oozing from her shoulder. She must have really lost too much blood lately if a small hit like that was having such an affect on her.  
  
Munakata lifted his sword into the air and she let her eyes close. Perhaps his anger would be cooled and it would finish with her, and Makoto would get a lighter sentence. As long as he did not die, that boy would find hope in any situation.  
  
She heard the clanging of metal. Makoto had moved in front of her, and used his handcuffs to catch Munakata’s blade. Munakata’s sword swung so hard there were sparks at the point of contact, and then he cut right through.  
  
Wow, so cool. Was all Mukuro thought, absentmindedly as she was protected by the person she loved.  
  
“If you’re taking her side, then you’re an enemy as well.”  
  
“No, I’m not believe me. Just listen to me, I can explain.”  
  
Munakata looked up at the girl who pushed herself off the ground, and stared back at him over her shoulder. “Why isn’t she saying anything in her defense? Does she have nothing to say at all for what she's done?"  
  
“She won’t defend herself. She only moved because you started attacking me, but listen you don't know her…”  
  
“Then I’ll show you what kind of person she is, fool.”  Munakata said in a low voice.

At that moment Makoto was swept off his legs again, as he was lifted up and thrown. Makoto felt his back hit a wall. When he saw a sword coming his way he rolled out of the way. His hands reached for the floor and he desperately scrambled to push himself back up to his feet. He looked back at Mukuro who was still watching silently. The silent girl always staring out a window. Of course she would never say a word in her defense.

He stood parallel to Munakata for a moment trying to catch his eyes to speak with him. Munakata immediately thrust his sword forward. Makoto was only saved by cowardice, throwing his back backwars, and tilting his whole body to dodge. He stumbled back a few steps again. Unlike Munakata who held a practiced fighting stance and stood with composure and pride, Makoto looked so clumsy he could barely stay on his feet. "She’ll kill when given enough reason to. That’s all she needs.”

Munakata took a few slow steps and then slashed at the air. Makoto had to wrench his body out of the way again. He saw the narrow hallway at both ends extending before them and knew Munakata would have him cornered before long. Talk, talk, he had to, but throwing his body around with all of his effort and talking at the same time required a lot of breath. “No, listen she did everything you said, but she changed! She realized what she did was wrong!”  
  
“People don’t change that easily! How many people have to die for the sake of your foolishness! She was your classmate for a year and you didn’t notice, and people died, and now even though you know you do nothing to stop her, to stop despair.” As Makoto fled into a classroom Munakata followed after him. Makoto dodged to the side and Munakata cut straight through one of the desks lined up in a row. Makoto cut through the rows of desks and pushed a few over to stop him, Munakata simply jumped up. An unbelievable confidence. As if even in front of the notoriosuly lucky boy, he expected everything to fall into place with his effort. 

Munakata raised his sword above his head and swung it down with everything he had, Makoto had to dive to get out of the way. As he fell through the air, Munakata grabbed him by the front of his suit, and wrenched him forward. Makoto face planted into a row of desks toppling them over. Makoto pulled himself up to his feet but before he could run anywhere else, Munakata was already behind him. This time instead of the blade he struck with everything he had with the butt of his sword jamming it into Makoto's stomach causing him to topple over into the pile of overturned desks.   
  
He unsheated his sword once more and raised it into the air to bring it down, but his overdramatic motion left time for a counter and Makoto had in last minute desperation undone his tie and used it to catch Munakata's sword. As the sword slowly sawed through the fabric of the tie Munakata glared him down.   
  
“ When did despair first get its hooks in you? Was it Kumagawa MIsogi? Was it spending time in class with Ikusaba Mukuro?”  
  
“No, listen I’m not on the side of despair," Makoto pleaded.   
  
“Don’t lie to me.”  
  
“We shouldn’t be at odds. We both want the same thing. We want to protect this school, that’s why I convinced Mukuro to join our side! There’s somebody else pulling the strings now and they’re manipulating us to fight like that.”  
  
Munakata seemed to get agitated with every word he spoke. The normally cool and compsed man, with silver hair and colorless eyes was boiling over, he screamed in Makoto’s face. “You keep saying that, need I remind you while you paid lip service to vacuous platitudes people in this school died. You don’t get it? She’s not just going to take your life, she’ll take the lives of everyone you love. Despair must die.”  
  
“Stop it please… she’s just some kid… and me too… this hurts.’ Naegi said. He could not suppress the fear that was welling in him, as he saw a cold blade dead center pointing between his eyes.  If he died right at this moment it meant never seeing his sister again, never keeping his promise to Mukuro to introduce them. Strange, dying for the sake of a loved one always seemed so romantic in the movies but here it was scary. Scary…  
  
“See, she doesn’t give a damn about you. You’re about to die and she won’t do a single thing.”  
  
“No, that's fine. Mukuro don’t fight, I don’t want you to fight anymore.”

Her sister made her fight over and over again. Until Ikusaba Mukuro forgot how to be a human being. Until she saw herself as nothing more than a weapon. Makoto thought that was a scary thing too. He loved to hang out with his friends, he loved simply being alive around them, and he might have been self critical but he was glad he was born into this life. It made him unbelievably scared that all of those things that were pleasant about life, could be lost in a moment, that he could forget who he was and what he cared about. That was why he feared the despair that devoured everything. More than that though, he was incredibly sad, Mukuro had never gotten the chance to have those things. He wondered how he would feel, if he was her, without those things finally getting a taste of happiness for the first time.  
  
Happiness would scare her. Losing sight of herself would scare her. Ikusaba Mukuro must be scared right now, he imagined. That was why he spoke up for her. Rather than protecting her from physical danger or harm, he wanted to take care of those emotions of a fragile girl who did not think what she felt mattered. Who did not think her story mattered. Those feelings, those hopes and dreams, especially of those people who were born and lived thinking that they were never going to be happy, don't their feelings need to be recognized and protected the most? “I know Mukuro made a lot of victims, but she was a victim too. Hurting other people doesn’t stop her from being a victim. You’re okay if a girl who never even got a chance at hope was sacrificed, if it means protecting everybody else?”  
  
“If it would save everyone, yes. I’ll do whatever must be done to thwart them, no sacrifice too dear, no cost too great. That’s true hope, true hope never loses to anything!”  
  
“That’s not true. That isn’t hope. Even if you kill Mukuro even if that ends despair, it’s not the same. If she pays for her life with this than that is the end, isn’t it? Where was the hope for her?” Makoto yelled, and Mukuro watching silent from the door way remembered when she had begged the same thing of Kumagawa Misogi. 

The tie broke in Makoto's hands. Munakata stopped himself from slitting the boy’s throat by grabbing the side of his face and dragging him along until he could smash the boy's face into a wall.  He dropped Naegi to the floor. As Naegi curled up and coughed again to get the blood out of his mouth. “Don’t turn this around. Yukizome told he everything. That girl you’re trying so hard to protect, tortured an innocent teacher who just wanted to protect her students into insanity. When did it happen… why… it doesn’t matter. Anything that hurts her will burn, even the memory of it will turn to ash.”  
  
“Stop talking like that. Mukuro’s a person too! I don’t care what she did she’s worth more than that. She has so much potential, there’s so many people she could help! If we can make her spend the rest of her life saving people’s lives, then what do we gain from killing her?”

Munakata reached forward and grabbed Naegi by the hair, dragging him up. He dropped his sword on the ground, and with only his fist slammed hit Makoto’s face over and over again. “You know nothing, Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing of what she’s done!”  
  
He hit, and hit, and hit, and hit, and hit, and hit, and hit, and hit. Makoto only stared forward his eyes looking to Mukuro. Not to Munakata but rather to her he pled, don’t fight, don’t defend me, you’re worth more than just a tool or someone who can fight.

“Because you were weak! Because you failed to stop her! Don’t talk like you know anything. Only someone unworthy of being called talented like you grasping at importance could keep talking like they can help others after failing to help a single person." 

Makoto’s head rolled to the side. He looked at Munakata in the eye for the first time, and saw that his colorless eyes were shaking. “Oh, I was wondering why you were so hard on me. I thought you hated me because I was untalented and therefore different than you and I put up with it because I wanted to change but... we're the same aren't we?"   
  
“Don’t try to twist anything…”  
  
“You think the only thing that separates us is what other people call talent. Nothing else. If you take away that talent you'll be empty, you're afraid of realizing that you're just as powerless as everyone else. Somebody who can't do a thing on his own, who could be swapped out for anybody else that's me, so if we both can't do anything on our own then together-" 

"Stop stringing people along on empty promises so they'll rely on you..."   
  
“We’re both the same. We love this school. We're in pain because we're powerless to help it. Yet, everybody unites around us and calls us hope. Being a special person is a burden on you isn't it? You think you should be doing better than you are?  It’s okay. Talent doesn’t mean anything. You don’t have to be strong just because you have talent. You’re a person too, Munakata-”

 _Kyosuke Hope’s Peak Highschool is what brought us together. I bet we never have met otherwise._ Chisa’s voice spoke in Munakata’s ear. _  
_  
“Shut up!” Munakata grabbed the tie that had been cut and then wrapped it around Makoto's neck, he pulled the two ends with opposite hands, tighter, tighter, he would show that kid what had happened because he pretended to be an adult. “Everything was going perfect, I was going to reform this school, this school that I loved so much, all I wanted to do was save it. You… you let the whole world be destroyed..." 

He was no longer talking to Makoto.  
He was strangling his own useless self.  
However, Mukuro knew that Makoto would die soon.  
  
There’s a knife and gun underneath your skirt. KIll him with a knife. There’s a gun under your skirt. Kill him with a gun. Shoot him once in the back of the head while he’s distracted by Makoto. Makoto will die otherwise. There’s a chair in the hallway, beat him to death with that chair. Makoto will die otherwise. There’s glass from a window. Break the window and slice his throat with the broken glass. Makoto will die otherwise. Use your combat skills to snap his neck from behind. You still have two hands. What are they good for if they can’t protect Makoto? Makoto will die otherwise.

Mukuro only saw pink, she saw bright pink that had appeared at the corners of her eyes and taken over everything. She did not want to hear Makoto’s desperate, rasping breaths as he choked and struggled to breathe with Munakata’s strangulation. She would rather hear nothing at all. She heard her blood pounding in her ears. She was not a person, she was a wolf with fangs. All she needed to know was who to protect and how to sink her teeth into, so why was she just watching all of this like a scared little girl! Her sister was right, she was useless, useless, useless.

“I’ll kill myself just let Naegi go!” Mukuro said, picking the sword off the ground that Munakata had thrown away holding it to her neck. “You’re right, Munakata-sensei. Despair deserves to die. It will end with me, okay? Once I die, that will end things so let go of Makoto please. I’m just despair, I just infected him.”

Munakata seemed to hear her as his fingers loosened and Makoto fell back to the floor. His fingers reached out. They curled around her tights, pulling her by just a little bit. “No, you’re a person…”  
  
“I was just using Makoto! I wanted to infect his hope with despair! I was going to betray him and sell out my entire class. I seduced him to my side so please forgive him. Even if you put him in a prison cell don’t kill him I’m the only one who needs to die.” She said, speaking in a loud and clear voice without any hesitation as she started to cut into her neck.  
  
“Bunny…” Makoto  
  
“I wanted to taste the despair of killing someone who put their trust in you. I wanted him to despise the day he ever met me. I wanted him to hate the fact that he trusted others. I wanted to plunge the hope he had for his friends into true despair.” Mukuro said as she pushed another serrated edge of the knife against her throat.  
  
Makoto grabbed the foot of Munakata who was just standing watching. He shoved his bloodied and blue face to the floor, bowing his head to beg. “Just give her a chance to set things right, please.”

“That’s easy to say when you’re not one of her victims. She was plotting to end the world, how exactly do you expect her to set things right?”

Makoto raised his head to give one last desperate please. “Don’t die hating yourself with such a sad face, please.”

“You are a parasitic excuse for a human being whose only fed off of others until this point. You’ve made countless people die so you could live.  You’ve committed extraordinary crimes, for no apparent reason, but, by all means, listen to Naegi.” Munakata said, glaring at her with ice cold eyes.  
  
“Even if what she was saying is true. Even if she did betray me! Even if all my friends died and I had to kill her myself to stop her. I wouldn’t regret the fact that I met her! She’s not despair, she’s a person! A person is going to die! She’s an irreplaceable person to me! I wouldn’t want to have anybody else in the whole world as my classmate besides Ikusaba Mukuro!”

Makoto screamed, blood and flecks of spit leaving his mouth as he did. He was doing nothing more than begging on the floor. It was ultimate Dogeza, and yet he did not give in. It did not matter if he could not produce a super move to save her, if he was not strong enough to defeat Munakata in a physical fight. All he wanted, all he could hope for, was that those two would listen to his words.  
  
At that moment Ikusaba Mukuro finally hesitated. If she died without a smile on her face, Kumagawa Misogi would be upset with her. She threw the sword aside and grabbed Makoto by the hand lifting him up.  
  
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do. I don’t disagree with anything that you said Munakata-sensei, I did all of those things but I… I don’t know what to do anymore.” Mukuro said, her eyes looking empty. She wanted to cry but it would be terrible, crying for an empty girl like herself who only knew how to kill.  
  
“I have to protect them from you.” Munakata said going for his sword.  
  
“Stop it! You’re just trying to protect Yukizome-sensei right! If we kill each other trying to protect our loved ones, then who’s going to get saved?” Makoto said, yelling even though his voice was nonexistent and his throat felt completely crushed.  
  
“I… You’re just kids… Since when did I… I couldn’t even save a bunch of kids from despair.”  
  
Makoto had no idea if he had gotten through to Munakata, but he had no wish to fight him to the death. There was Sakakura to deal with too. He was quickly realizing though, that neither of them were going to back down on their ideals. That was what made them so similar after all. Even Enoshima Junko could not drive him away from hope. Could he convince himself to stop fighting? He was just a normal guy, not even a try hard like Zenkichi so why was he so damn stubborn. Even if they did beat up Munakata in a fight though, that would not prove Mukuro’s innocence or that there was a life for her outside of fighting, that she could do something besides kill.  
  
Then, Makoto realized. It was so simple he wondered why he did not think of it to begin with.  
His hand still holding onto Mukuro’s, his fingers entwined into hers so tightly so that he would never let go.  
  
He turned around and ran the opposite direction.  
Why not?  
  
If he was weak, and a coward, he might as well use those to the best of his ability. If he relied on others, on good luck to save him, if he could do nothing on his own, then he might as well do that to the best of his ability.

“M-Makoto, where are we going?”  
  
“We’re running!”

“Why?”  
  
“I don’t know what to do! I’m weak! I’m foolish! I really don’t know how to make up for what you did to people, but I want you to keep living. So let’s run for our lives! We’ll keep running, until we figure out the answer later!”

A weak willed response, but he shouted it at the top of his lungs. Mukuro was dragged away from danger by Naegi. He really did put her life above everything, Somebody as good as him, somebody who had lived a normal life, had a normal sense of right and wrong, and a normal amount of happiness could face what she did and still thought she deserved to live.

That good person believed she could live, so why could she not believe it herself? She had accepted all of her sister’s hate, so why was Makoto’s love for her to accept. She did everything for her sister who wished her to fight, to kill, to be a tool. Why could she not do anything for Makoto who simply wanted her to live as a person, and asked for nothing more.

 

As she thought about that in the early morning, they escaped the building. Standing in thier way was Togami Byakuya, he saw the both of them, bleeding and heard the sounds of a fight behind them.  
  
“L-listen Togami. I can explain.” Makoto spoke up. Togami already knew about what Mukuro and Junko had done and he didn’t really seem to care as long as he was not directly affected so.  
  
“I’ve already arranged for a ride out of here. Go. I’ll pretend that I sold you out to Munakata for my own benefit and point him in the wrong direction.”  
  
“YOU REALLY ARE MY BEST FRIEND!”

This had quickly gone from the most miserable to the happiest day of Makoto’s life.  
  
“Munakata he’s right here come kill him please!”

“Nevermind, I’m going to the car. Where is it? Is it a limo?”  
  
“I don’t like you enough for a limo, I just called an uber.”  Togami said, holding onto his phone.  
  
They ran past him, and all the way until they reached the road. At that moment just as Togami said, a car pulled in front of them. A woman wearing a hat and hip hop clothing smiled in the front seat, and knew who they were without even looking.  
  
“Hey, Makyun did you seize your chance?” She asked with her eyes on the road.  
  
Makoto nodded. “Yeah, I took the chance. As long as you can keep living then there’s still a chance, that’s hope.”  
  
Makoto said, but he was not making that speech for himself. He squeezed the hand of the person he most wanted to hear those worse. Mukuro had said that the reaosn he took notice of her was not because he saw her as someone special, he did not save her for her, but rather he would have saved anybody in that situation. That was true, but his feelings had changed since then.

More than anyone else, a girl who had never been given a chance, he wanted those words to reach. Perhaps Munakata was right and his words were just empty platitudes, but even if they only reached one person that would be okay, they would mean something.

“Makoto why are you staring at me?”  
  
“Because you’re pretty.”  
  
“I think you lost too much blood.”  
  
“I can find you pretty for reasons besides oxygen deprivation and blood loss! Please have a little more confidence in yourself I’m begging you! I’ll do anything.”  
  
“You don’t need to do anything. Just for a little while longer, stay here.” She laid her head in his lap. That was the reason she could not bring herself to tear out her own throat. It would mean not having these few minutes now to be close to him. Even if it was just living for a few more minutes it was okay for her, but she was not able to cut that future short.

“Gosh, guess I betrayed the school now too. Oh well. It can’t be helped. There’s no way I’d let you betray the school alone, no man is an island you know.”  
  
“Yeah. Even my sister didn’t take down the school alone. She's basically a neet if you leave her alone. No Enoshima is an Island either.”

As they agreed to stay together even in punishment, the rest of the car ride was much quieter. Except for Izuko, and her incessant need to explain things. Makoto learned a lot about the local myths of the area though, it was fascinating even though he did not think it particularly relevant.  
  
After Mukuro and him had fallen asleep supporting each other, time passed. Later, they were sitting awkwardly at a cafe table, with Yasuke Masuda sitting with them while Kumagawa sat on the other side of the table.  
  
“I was gone for fifteen minutes, how are there more children here? Did you all multiply?”


	22. At Least, Be Humane

Her own sister was her enemy.  
Ikusaba knew that not even she herself was her own ally. After all, despite the fact that Junko had betrayed her in the past and very nearly killed her, Ikusaba believed that she could come to an understanding with her little sister.  
And that’s why she had felt the need to protect her.  
  
Yes, she had wanted to save her. She wanted to save even such a person. Knowing that Enoshima Junko had only lived for despair all her life, that all she looked forward to was a despair filled death she had wanted to save her.  
  
She left her family when she was fourteen years of age. She pushed through three years worth of intense training. She became a soldier  and did work that made her close to danger, she was shot at, entered minefields, crawled under barbed wire, engaged in stealth missions. She succeeded every time without a single bullet even scratching her. She killed her heart and killed people. She killed, and she killed, and she killed. She cut down people that were in her way and laid them down on her sisters feet.  
  
She genuinely thought that Junko might live, even if she had to walk recklessly over corpses that girl might one day want to live. All of that was for her small family. So she could one day be sisters with  Junko, so one day Junko might start to want to live with her. She sacrificed herself, other people’s lives, and even dirtied her hands so much she needed to wear gloves at all times for the sake of her sister and her sake alone.  
  
And yet, none of those actions reached Enoshima Junko. None of them mattered in the end. Even when everything went to plan her sister would have just killed herself anyway. Even if Ikusaba had somehow killed every last human being on earth for the sake of her sister Junko would never have been satisfied with that despair to consider living.  
  
She would have just killed her sister on an impulse and then herself. Even so Mukuro could not hold that against her.

That’s right… you were just being you, Junko. You just wanted despair, right?  
It’s because you love me. You wanted to kill me and fall into despair. That must have been in. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t grant you that despair, little sis.

Her life’s course had suddenly changed just like that. Everything she did all those eighteen years was for nothing. The people she had thought she killed for the sake of her sister, turned out to die for no reason at all. That girl who only knew how to be strong lost all strength in her body.

“Don’t die hating yourself, with such a sad face.” She heard a voice cut through the confusion in her head. A pleasantly normal voice. Makoto’s voice.

Knowing exactly who she was and how many people her own selfish wish to save someone had killed, he still said those words to her.  
  
She was starting to wonder, if by some miracle she could continue living happily with Makoto and foil her sister’s plans time and time again from here on out, wouldn’t Junko afll into an even greater despair? Wouldn’t thank make her happier?  
  
Or was that just wishful thinking on her part. Her own selfish desire to live even with what she had done. In battlefields where she made her home, her main mission was to kill and survive. And in that setting Ikusaba was invincible. She could put her own emotions on a leash and become a killing machine.  
  
However, when she was facing her own sister in the battlefield of a normal high school life (as eccentric as her life had become since meeting Kumagawa MIsogi), Ikusaba could not control her emotions no matter how hard she tried. Survival should have just been an instinct for her, as she was only a wolf after all, but she was full of emotions she could not stop thinking about no matter how much she tried.

She let her face down sink further into the bath water. She wanted to stop thinking, but it did not particularly help that at the moment the person who as at the center of most of these thoughts was sitting next to her at the public baths they had gone too.  
  
“Hey Mukuro why are you being so silent? I only brought you here in these baths in the first place so you could stare at your older sister’s voluptuous body in envy knowing you’ll never be this beautiful. Hey, hey, why don’t you shampoo my hair, or go drown, do something useful at least.”

That sister continued to say annoying things like that, because she could not read the mood at the moment. Mukuro just continued to sink down until the water was just under her nose.  
  
Still, in the past even an annoying sister like that had said. “Don’t go.” When a shady woman appeared in front of them, and tempted her. If you leave your family behind and fight with Fenrir, you can become strong on your own. Her sister had forced her to do several cruel things before that point, and always included her in her schemes for despair until they were seven years old but never once did Mukuro feel important in those schemes. She just felt like she was a hanger on. They had perfectly normal parents too, and even in that family Mukuro felt like she merely existed as a shadow to her bright sister. She thought she had no place to belong unless she fought.  
  
Except in that moment Junko did not want her to go. That was the moment that proved it to her. Junko really did see her as a sister. It was enough, she thought. She was fine with that. She was happy that somehow Junko who was indifferent to everybody and everything loved her enough to not want to be separated from her. Se could live with just that one scene in her heart, the one time her sister had reached out to her. There was one person who loved her. So she thought.

Though she did not go when Junko was right next to her to join that lady who represented Fenrir, in the middle of the night on their last day of the trip she managed to sneak away from her sister somehow and stayed in that foreign country while the rest of her family went home.

The invitation was not as special of a scouting as Mukuro believed it to be. Well, any elite military group that would try to recruit a fourteen year old girl was shady to begin with. She had been knocked out and tied up in the back of the truck, transported like cattle. She could only tell where she was because of the rough bumps on the road, shaking her in the back of the truck.  
  
“You were lucky. You have that thing called talent. If you were useless to us, we would have just made you carry a bomb into enemy lines, or had you cut up and your organs sold.”  
  
Those were the kind of people in Fenrir who took her in. The lush green of her middle school days, the walks to school with Junko and Matsuda, those were gone and her world had become one of concrete and steel.  
  
“Don’t cry.”  
  
At some point, an instructor had told her.  
  
“Don’t show anything on your face at all to the enemy.”

An instructor told her once. The instructor had a whip in his hand, and with it he struck her back mercilessly. Mukuro did not seem to even notice the pain. She just did as she was told and sealed those emotions away. It was easy when she was so far away from her sister. Any emotion at all was punished with physical violence and because of that she was quickly able to learn to suppress them.  
  
_There’s no reason to be faint-hearted. I chose this after all. Three years and I’ll be done before I know it, and I’ll be able to meet my family soon._ When they met again this time for sure she would stand in front of Junko as an equal rather than merely her shadow.

In the present time her sister was staring at her again. In fact they had not bathed like this together since before Mukuro had gone to Fenrir. If her sister were to insult her body this time, or say she was ugly she would not disagree. Not the cuts on her arms and legs, there were old scars across her body.  
  
She had never once been hit in the battle field, because her main method of learning had been the pain she received in that training. There was one particular scar across her back that looked like three long claws of an animal had been raked against it. Mukuro had not been attacked by a wolf or bear r any kind of wild animal except for the plush Monokuma. This was a mark made during a torture session.

Fenrir was both elite and secretive. The reason they were able to remain top in the world was because their members were trained even to resist torture in order to keep the company’s secrets.  
  
At the time she had distanced herself to try to think too much about what she was going through, but in retrospect that kind of training was extreme.  
  
She was shown a photo, and told to memorize every single bit of information she could about it. It was like reciting lines for a play, she learned the entire history of this fictitious person. Then, she was locked in a small room. Eventually, a hired torturer came in and subjected her to it for half a day.  
  
Shown the photo of the man again and again, the man screamed in her face to try to force her to give up the information. She was hit, kick, cut, had her nails ripped off, and even a couple of fingers broken. She became familiar with many different kinds of pain that way. She would even be grabbed by the back of her head and have it shoved into a barrel full of water until she felt like she was about to drown, she’d be pulled up gasping for air and then in that desperate moment shoved back underneath again.  
  
Mukuro was considered especially talented at resisting the pain. That was because when she was presented with the photograph instead of seeing that person she simply imagined she was protecting Junko’s secrets.  
  
The easiest way to resist pain was to just feel nothing at all. That was what she thought anyway, and because of that she was able to make it through inhumane training. She was praised even and called a genius for that.  
  
A woman put a hand on her shoulder. “Congratulations.”

 _What congratulations?_   _What are you praising me for? There's another disappointing result._ _  
_

“You’re better than anybody else I’ve ever seen before. You cast aside your humanity and became a human weapon. All you need is a reason to keep fighting.”  
  
That was the kind of gruesome world she belonged in. _That was my choice. I chose to live by killing people. All alone. Even when next to my sister. Without needing anybody else, and only depending on myself and my own strength. I’ll kill and kill and kill more people. If I stop to cry every time I take a person’s life I won’t be able to continue living._ _  
_ _It’s not possible. It’s unbearable. That woman was right. The only option was to cast aside my heart, right?_

She had thought that, and yet here she was now. Not living as a killer, not living on a battlefield, but rather she had gone to a school yard and tried to live out her rose tinted school life.

All of that for the sake of saving her sister, and she had not been the one to save Junko. She had not saved anyone. So, why was she being allowed to live this life still. As her thoughts swirled in the water around her, Junko finally reached max impatience. A bar of soap bounced off her head.  
  
“Mukuro are you even listening to me?”  
  
“... Um… Yes.”  
  
“Really repeat back what I just said to me.”

“God, I am seriously freaking bored…! I’m gonna die… I’m gonna die from being bored! I’m infected! I’ve got terminal boredom disease!” Mukuro said, her voice deadpan.  
  
“That’s not what I said at all.”  
  
“Oh, really, but that’s what I heard.” Mukuro’s voice still did not show any emotion. She wondered why Junko even bothered. When they had finally reunited after all this time the first thing she did was grab her sister and drag her to a bathing house that they had rented out with Kaiki’s money.  
  
It was odd being pampered like this. Living a rose tinted life. She had withstood the pain of fenrir, she had withstood beatings from the instructors all for the sake of her sister, and then came home to get hit by her sister again and again, in the head with a baseball bat, slapped with her hands, tripped and kicked over and over again with her boots. The same sister she had endured all that pain to gain the strength was the one hitting her now. She had just come to accept it as an inevitability, she was always going to be fighting like this.  
  
The whole world was her enemy the moment she chose Junko over it. Not only that but her sister was her enemy as well. She wanted nothing more to save her, and that made them enemies.  
  
Then why was she relaxing at a bathhouse with friends?  
  
“You should stop making such a grumpy face. It’s totally harshing on my groove. You killed it! You killed my groove with that ugly mug of yours! You mugged it! My poor innoncet groove! You monster. ”  
  
“I’m not grumpy.” She was not making any face at all, she was sure.

Yet, her sister’s features suddenly settled into an emotionless expression that was like staring into a mirror. Oh, they were twins after all. Sometimes Mukuro forgot that they had any similarities at all.  “See, you’re making your grumpy face. A girl whose brains are made of muscle like you can’t pull a fast one on her sister. Why are you brooding about so much anyway? I didn’t even know stupid people like you were smart enough to realize they had problems.”  
  
“It’s nothing…”  
  
“Where did you get those scars anyway? I thought you had a perfect record when you were working with Fenrir?”  
  
“Like you actually care.” She had learned to be a little rude to her sister, but that was it. The two hadn’t learned to talk at all. They had just started fighting recently. She had fought her sister to stop her from becoming a neet when she forgot to eat in sleep in her obsessive drive to bring Kumagawa back from this world.  
  
“Well you know, your little impression of me totally not funny. You failed to capture my essence as always, how can you possibly be so bad at portraying me? Are you even trying? In fact, why do lines that sound so cool coming out of my mouth immediately become lame when you say them?”  
  
It seemed her sister would not give up. Usually, just brushing her off was good enough bcause Junko was used to no resistance at all. “Why would I want to imitate your personality in the first place? You’re a bad example and all you do is make bad choices.”  
  
“Don’t think you can banter with me. Banter requires charm and people skills, and you’re a hopeless recluse who can’t talk to anyone but her sister. In fact you don’t even talk to your sister, you just whine like a begging dog in front of her.”  
  
“Well uh... social recluses can think of things to say too, it's just usually they don't have the courage to say them.”  
  
“Ugh, I’d roll my eyes at you but I only have one eye left so that’d look stupid. I can’t believe you ruin everything, even eye rolling.”  
  
“I don’t think you’d look stupid if you rolled your eye. You kind of look like a pirate with that eyepatch.”  
  
“Pirates aren’t even in this season!” Junko snapped at her sister.  
  
Mukuro had no idea where this conversation was going. A common experience with her sister. She drew her knees in front of her chest and leaned back. “Why do you keep staring at me so much, and don’t say it’s because I’m ugly or whatever.”

“If Misogi and Mukuro can predict my lines have I really become that washed out as a character? Do I need to do some major rewrites or something? Fresh material?”  
  
“Of course we know what you’re going to say, we’re both your family after all.” Mukuro said, continuing to be honest in spite of the barrage of insults she was enduring..  
  
“You’re not going to tell me about how you got those scars?” Enoshima Junko asked, her voice quieter.  
  
“It’s none of your business.” Mukuro sunk in further to her knees.  
  
“I’m your sister. Your pain is my pain.”  
  
“You don’t mean that.”  
  
“Yes, I do.”  
  
“Not in the way I want you to.”  
  
A quick exchange, lasting less than a minute. Yet, that little bit of honest was completely exhausting for both parties. Despair sisters never talked like this. They had almost no experience with actual conversation at all. In fact she preferred the insults to this, it was less heavy.  
  
“I guess you won’t tell me, since you have Naegi-kun now you don’t need to tell me. Hey, hey, if you love him so much that you’d abandon your own sister why don’t you just marry him?”  
  
“I’m totally going to marry him.”  
  
“Nooooo, you can’t. I hate when good things happen to people and it has nothing to do with me.”  
  
“Aren’t you being a little bit too honest with your feelings there?”  
  
“Are you saying your sister should be a liar? What a terrible example of an older sister you are.” Then suddenly Junko changed her mind and stopped pestering her. “Let’s talk about Naegi-kun since you love him so much.”  
  
“I’m sorry for liking things, Junko. What are you going to do try to convince me to kill him?”  
  
“Your apology isn’t accepted. Really, how dare you find anything about this vapid and empty world likable.”

“Well I find my vapid and empty sister likable somehow, so I think I’ll manage.” They were probably just going to keep bickering like this. Mukuro had always come up with lines like this in her head but she lacked the courage to say them until recently.  
  
“Besides, I wouldn’t try to convince you to kill Naegi. Maybe the most basic bitch season one Enoshima Junko-chan would do that but not season three Junko. I’ve matured then.”  
  
“I suppose even milk will get more rotten if you leave it sitting in the air for too long.”  
  
“You’re not allowed to have this kind of funny writing seriously! I’m supposed to be the funny one!” Junko fumed, making such a fuss she started to splash the water around. “Don’t you want to ask some advice from your super cute sister whose popular with all the boys?”  
  
“You’re worse with boys then I am. I got a boyfriend before you did and… umm.. I think most of your progress with Misogi-chan is due to Misogi-chan’s efforts not really you.”  The bitterness, the blunt edge to her voice, they were just a shield like putting up a defensive front. It was nothing more than a bluff though. Inside her heart was pounding with worry over what her sister might say involving Naegi.  
  
“I’m just surprised is all. I thought you were the type to shoot right through people’s heads and hearts without blinking, but not able to steal away some skinny little boy’s heart. You know he had a crush on someone else when you got together- so how did you of all people make a move?”  
  
“So, what does that matter? That’s what Misogi-chan said to me. He said I should just make a move and sleep with him if I like him. I told him that only needy girls desperate for affection do that. And he said ‘so what, you’re a girl so desperate you fell for the first person who smiled at you so you might as well act needy.’ It doesn’t matter who likes who, just make a move. Love is a battlefield too, he who strikes first, strikes hardest.”  
  
“...Really? I really hate that idiot.” Junko muttered under her breath “So basically you just did it because he encouraged you? You found someone else’s orders to blindly believe in? You've decided to throw your life away drinking Naegi's uncool-aid is that it? There’s a limit to how disappointing some people can be, you know that?”  
  
“Are you sure about that? You should stop underestimating people Junko, humans are always overcoming their limits all the time like Medaka-chan, I’m sure they can become more and more disappointing as long as they work hard on it.”  
  
She could hear the annoyance as Junko clicked her teeth and she shivered. Her sister would probably see right through her. Junko was right she was terrible at bantering. All she could put up was this petty, token resistance. It’s not like she had learned to do anything new, all she had ever done in the past was put up walls and sink further into herself, and that’s all she did now. “Well I’m surprised is all. It’s an unexpected result. Makoto’s an easy to lead along boy so I’m sure he would have just gone along with whoever confessed to him first as his love interest. What’s surprising is he was able to live after choosing you. Munakata almost killed him for your sake, didn’t he? Only the fit survive in this world. The only thing that kind-hearted people can do is die, y’know…?”  
  
“That’s not true Junko. You know it’s not true. There are some people who will still be kind no matter how much they’re beaten. You pretend like you’re fascinated with Kumagawa because he’s some weird despair magnet but the reason you’re close to him is his kindness isn’t it? He’s the last person in the world who should empathize with you or me, but he always puts us first. Makoto’s like that too. And… me too… you can’t beat the kindness out of some people no matter how hard you try. Find a new strategy already, I thought you got bored easily of doing the same old thing again and again.”  
  
Ahhhh, Junko’s going to see right through me was all she thought.  
Because part of her agreed that Makoto had gotten into danger because of her, that her life was not worth risking his over. She closed her eyes expecting Junko to maybe lose what tiny patience she had and hit the back of her head or maybe try to force her head underwater.  
  
She did neither, however. Puzzlingly, her sister suddenly went quiet. Then, she went to get some shampoo and returned. A moment later her sisters hand was in her hair. She was not pulling it or even trying to yank her head, her sister had just started to shampoo her hair. “Your hair’s gotten a little bit longer lately sis… why do you even wear it so short anyway? You trying to look different from me? That complete polar opposite personalities twins trope is underrated.”  
  
Junko started to whisper like that, and then she went dead uiet after her mutterings were over. Mukuro had no idea wha was going through her head at all. However, when she saw Junko’s expression reflecting on the water in front of her, showing the face of the girl behind her, she saw someone completely bored and listless.  
  
Mukuro’s heart ached just a little bit. Her sister’s silence was hurting her more than all the insults had been. Perhaps she had said too much, she started to worry again. When it came time to rinse Mukuro’s hair, Junko spoke up but only because the silence seemed to be crushing her too. Or she had gotten bored of it.

“You’re really not going to talk about those scars, huh?”  
  
“I umm…”  
  
“I wonder what the boys are talking about.”  
  
“Umm…”  
  
“Do you think the boy’s compare dick sizes in the baths like the girls compare breast sizes in anime?”  
  
“Junko, gosh...”  
  
She had no idea at all how the conversation had even reached this point.

 

😈

 

『Yasuke-chan, let me wash your back!』  
  
“How about you slip on a bar of soap, fall into the bath, hit your head on the bottom and drown?” Yasuke said, not looking back from the corner where he was washing himself while Makoto and Kumagawa soaked together.

"You shouldn’t say such mean things Matsuda-kun! You never know when people are going to take you seriously.” Makoto whined trying to diffuse the situation, because it was impossible for him not to play peacekeeper.

『That’s fine, I’d die before taking anything seriously. The moment he stops laughing Kumagawa Misogi has died.』  
  
“I don’t want to see you die, please don’t talk like that.” Makoto’s voice was gentle. The water rippled as he fussed over Kumagawa. Makoto had even stood up out of the water to make his point.  
  
Kumagawa’s eyes trailed lazily over. 『Jeez, some guys are just naturally gifted huh?』  
  
“What are you talking about?”

『Nothing, just more of my nonsense.』  
  
“I don’t think it’s nonsense. Talking to you always so fun, and you really seem like you listen and try to understand people. You’re way more insightful than anybody ever gives you credit for.” Makoto continued on.  
  
From the corner Matsuda groaned. “Can you shut up already? I’m going to suffocate under the pressure of all of this genuine human decency. I already know I’m the worst but it’s not like I want it rubbed in my face.”

“Umm, are you okay? Is something wrong? Why are you talking like that?” Makoto looked over in concern.  
  
Even as the narrator, I cannot explain why I am like that. I really am just like that. A tragedy for the ages, Yasuke Matsuda has to suffer through the tragic condition of being me and therefore like that.  
  
『That’s just one of his charm points.』  
  
“No it’s not.”  
  
No it’s not.  
  
Oh, this narration is getting a bit redundant at this point. One of us needs to shut up before we drive away the readers with our combined bitterness. I hate past me, and while that may seem unfair I’m pretty sure that bitch also hates future me considering all he put me through recklessly without thinking so it’s mutual at least.  
  
Anyway, back to the story from my self-loathing tangent. Makoto had finished recounting the events with Munakata to the boys. (Apparently, I’m one of the boys now. I never asked to be a part of your friend group please go back to excluding me).

“I thought we were similiar but maybe I was wrong. Munakata worked really hard to earn the belief people have in it, I just kind of lucked out, hehe…” He said as he ran his hand through the spiky hair that was currently dripping from his soak in the water.

『No, you are kind of similar. You’re both people who everybody places their hopes upon right? And because of that sometimes you’re seen more as a symbol than a person, even you sound like a space alien sometimes. But you’re different too...』

“Oh, god I just realized if both Naegi and Junko are in the same room are they going to start debating hope and despair again? I’m going to have to kill both of you to save myself the headache.” Yasuke complained from his complaining corner.  
  
“Wait no, don’t kill anybody for my sake Matsuda-kun.” Makoto said before sinking back into the water. “Yeah, I’m way lamer…”

『Well, yes that’s true but-』  
  
“You could have disagreed with me!”

『Gosh Makoto just because we’re in water doesn’t mean you have to start fishing for compliments.』  
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with saying nice things… I’ll tell you you’re cool as many times as you need to hear it.”

『That’s the difference Makoto-chan. You’re not like me, you don’t need to show off and be cool. You’re fine the way you are. I’m sure there’s a time in the past that Munakata-kun was like that too, but then he threw away his softness. Maybe he’s good at punching things, but I think you can accomplish things without violence and that makes you stronger than all the strong people who resort to violence.』

“I don’t get why you’re so kind to me, Kumagawa-senpai. I haven’t done anything for you…”

『You’re always kind to others without asking for anything in return, so why do you have to earn kindness from me?』  
  
“Ugh, it’s too warm in here.” Yasuke interrupted. Not wanting to be part of a moment.  
  
He had gotten sick of third wheeling for Kumagawa and Junko, and then another couple had gone and shown up out of nowhere. He was not third wheeling anymore, he was basically just a spare tire at this point.

“Hey, even after you graduate from school I hope you’ll still remain my senpai. You think if I marry Mukuro… we’d still be connected…”

『Hey, hey, who gave you permission to marry my big sister? You wanna die. Yasuke-chan go kill him.』

“I’m not going to listen to what you say. Now I’m going to spend the rest of my life protecting Naegi-kun and his happiness just to spite you.” Yasuke complained from the complaining corner, better known as the Yasuke corner.

『Why do you have to always be so disagreeable, Yasuke-chan?』  
  
“I’m not always disagreeable, there’s just something about being around you that makes me want to deny you with every part of my being.”

“Guys… get along please.”

『What are you talking about we are getting along…?』Kumagawa tilted his head genuinely confused. He was pure after all. He was not like the bathwater they were sitting in that would become dirty over time. All those negative emotions just did not seem to reach him, they rushed down the river and were smashed to pieces on the rapids against the rocks.『Yasuke-chan isn’t bullying me. I clean his shoes every day in his locker because I like to.』

“I’m sure it’s naive to think so, but I want the bonds I made with you and Mukuro to last forever. I don’t care if everybody else sees you as dangerous to be around, they haven’t gotten to know you. You guys have dreams too.”

『It’s true, I dream of one day being a house husband whose pampered and never has to work a real job. I’m sure Yasuke-chan has dreams too.』  
  
“I dream that one day you’ll shut up.” Yasuke snapped back at him.

Makoto’s eyes trailed down as he saw the scars on Kumagawa. Now that he thought about it, he had never seen Kumagawa so much as take his shirt off. Kumagawa always seemed to wear his pain on his sleeve but Makoto got the sense that Kumagawa at the same time concealed his true pain.  
  
Makoto’s fingers traced his own skinny body. There were only a few cuts from his fight with Munakata, his fingers reached up to his neck and there was the slightest traces of burns from where he had been strangled. However those were still nothing. As he watched the water back and forth, rock against Kumagawa’s body in small waves as he felt the ebb and flow he kept staring at those scars. They seemed to wash off in the water, and he saw those spiraling, senseless pains that had been inflicted on Kumagawa reflect back in the water, surounding both of them. He wondered he really did what pain Kumagawa was feeling right now. His skin was perfectly clear, and it yet it was burning, there was something raking across his skin agitating him because he could not figure out how Kumagawa felt.  
  
And he wanted. He wanted to understand. He wanted there to be at least one person in the world who could understand Kumagawa’s pain like it was their own, because nobody deserved to suffer alone. When people were alone, they stopped acting like people. They needed to be around each other to be human, at least that was what Makoto thought.

『I know I’m cute but don’t fall for me. If you break Mukuro-chan’s heart I’ll kill you.』Kumagawa said, covering up his chest with his hands, and faking embarrassment.  
  
“Your scars… did they hurt?” Makoto asked. The most obvious question in the world. The question only a fool would ask, but somehow with Makoto around it became genuine.

『Sorry, Makoto-chan. It’s hard to talk about with someone who’s not family. Of course that’s just my way of providing you incentive to marry my wonderful older sister Mukuro-chan and spend the rest of your life trying to make her happy.』

“I mean I was already planning on doing that but… I don’t really know what having a brother is like. I only have a sister. I guess I’d have to ask Komaru but…it might be nice.” Makoto’s face reddened as he stared at the water once more.  
  
“You know the person you date in high school isn’t someone you’re guaranteed to marry. You might go through all this trouble for Ikusaba’s sake, only to break up for a stupid reason like a fight over what kind of lamp you want to buy at Ikea.” Yasuke as he walked back and sat right in between them.

『That’s fine, Makoto-chan always acts like the people who are around him right now are going to be his friends forever and that’s fine. I think especially because the world is going to try to beat that naivete out of him, Makoto-chan should keep going just to spite the world.』  
  
Yasuke recalled the words. The words that had moved his heart a little bit. Oh, he was admitting he had a heart to move, whatever sickness Makoto had must have been infectious and spread through the water. Those words. _I know an idiot. He treats every love like it’s his first. That’s how it should be done._

“If you don’t mind putting up with me that long… I hope things can stay like this.”

『We’ll always be connected, I mean even if we start to hate each other there’s going to be connections between us. After all you’re the natural hero who can save people, and I’m the villain who only knows how to be violent. There’s always a connection between the hero and villain like that you know, like Touma and Accelerator.』

Makoto’s gaze grew just a little bit stronger. “You shouldn’t call yourself a villain. Please don’t think of yourself that way, because I’m going to tell you you’re wrong even if it makes us fight.”

『I don’t want to fight though, I would definitely lose. Besides if we start fighting in the middle of the baths it’ll turn into a fanservice scene.』

“I think you should just let Kumagawa continue to wallow in his low self esteem. The water here is just fine.” Matsuda said, crossing his arms between them.  
  
“You know that’s wrong, even though all you do is bicker you seem to want to get along with Kumagawa. Why don’t you just stay in here until the two of you get along?”  
  
“Is this guy broken or something?” Yasuke said looking to Kumagawa at his side.

『No, that’s just Makoto-chan. He’s like a princess. Not the wicked kind like Junko, though. Makoto-chan's so magical that even in a subversive work like this around him all tropes get played straight.』  
  
“Guys stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Makoto’s voice squeaked behind them. He could probably hit the high notes if he really did want to start breaking into song.  
  
“Well whatever it’s stupid. Only a pair of idiots would stay in the bath until they passed out and suddenly become friends.”

Several hours later, after Yasuke had said that fateful remark.  
  
“I can’t believe you idiots stayed in the bath until you passed out.” Enoshima Junko declared, hands on her hips.

They had been dragged out by Makoto, and then Kumagawa and Yasuke were dumped unceremoniously on the floor on top of one another.    
  
“Hey… you know what Kaiki was saying earlier?” Yasuke muttered so low only Kumagawa could hear.

『Oh are you starting to listen to him Yasuke-chan?』  
  
“Hell no. If I want to hear a bitter old man bitch I’ll just talk to myself.” Yasuke muttered back. “But… when he said people can’t save other people what did you think of that? Do you think only people like Naegi can save others?”

『You can’t save other people. It’s impossible.』Kumagawa said, lacking any of his normal ambiguity and vagueness in his voice. 『But you’re not wrong for trying, Yasuke-chan. If nobody ever tried than nobody would get saved.』  
  
“That’s such a non-answer.”

『That’s the only kind of answer someone who speaks nonsense can give.』  
  
So those two continued, happily, not getting along with one another.

 

😈

 

The five children sat down to eat on Kaiki’s dollar. It was not the the atmosphere was not enjoyable, or they were not getting along. As long as Kumagawa was right next to her, wearing a sweater knit with Junko love, Junko seemed a bit more grounded than usual.  
  
She could play at getting along with their class when she wanted to after all, even though it was bothersome and annoying to her. Even though it usually ended up with her lashing out later. However, Mukuro thought once or twice she saw something like a smile flash on her sister’s face as she leaned against MIsogi.  
  
However, even though it was happy and they were somehow all getting along, Mukuro could not stand it. She thought when she ran away from the battlefield that was the school her heart might settle down just a little bit but the confusion had not abated at all.

As she wealked outside to get some air though, the person who ran after her to stop her was not Makoto, but rather Yasuke Matsuda was the first to find her. She was grateful for that, she did not want to worry Makoto any more than she had.  
  
“Hey, Matsuda-kun…”  
  
“I didn’t come to check on you, I just also hated how much the others were getting along inside.”  
  
“Okay, Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“I”m serious! I’m saying genuinely unpleasant things will one of you take me seriously! Maybe I’m not being coy maybe I just hate you! The tsundere trope has ruined my entire life.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun… Do you think it was our fault that Junko turned out like that?”  
  
Matsuda was sure she had asked this question before. Even if she had not asked it, it had been weighing on his mind for awhile. It was easy to say they had no choices from the beginning and that everything would have gone to Enoshima’s plan no matter what they had done. Once they started accepting they had choices, they were nothing.  
  
Nothing but the choices they had made that led them up until this point. That reflected poorly on both of them. Yet still he said it, because he could not bear the melancholy that was so obvious on that usually expressionless girl’s face. “It’s obviously Junko’s fault. Hey, why are you out here anyway? You shouldn’t be that uncomfortable with the atmosphere. I’m the only one that’s single around a bunch of couples.” He was the spare tire.  
  
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m really happy Makoto chose me over and over again even though he had no reason to. He chose me over his entire school that he loved so much. I should be happy.” Mukuro was so happy she felt she was practically useless. The girl who only knew how to kill was fading away, she was practically useless.  
  
“Don’t you think we should become happy? Just to spite Junko who planned out such miserable endings for us.”

“I don’t... Hey Matsuda-kun how come you always fight with Kumagawa anyway?”

“There’s no particular deep reason I just think his face is stupid. Mature stuff like that.”  
  
“You know I’m partially at fault for what happened to you when Junko was running around as Ryoko, but Kumagawa was on your side he was helping you. It doesn’t really make sense that you’re trying to be nice to me right now but keep pushing him away.”  
  
“...”

“I get it though that’s how I felt. It makes you feel totally useless, because we spent our whole lives trying to understand Junko, and we felt like we were the only ones who understood us, then he showed up. It felt like everything we did up until that point was useless.”  
  
“...Tch, don’t go relating to a guy like me. There’s no need to insult yourself like that.”  
  
“Well, even if I get along better with Misogi-chan now it still feels like that. I still feel useless.” Mukuro said, turning away from Matsuda to hide her face. She was rather shy. For such a strong looking girl. “Anyway, instead of trying to be more useful all i’ve done is let myself get spoiled for a half a year. My senses have considerably dulled.”

『That’s not so bad.』However, Kumagawa proclaimed optimistically. 『Being spoiled.』  
  
“In what way? How is it good?” Mukuro turned around to face him.  
  
『I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying it’s not bad.』Kumagawa having appeared from the shadows stepped into the spotlight of the conversation. When someone like him was in the spotlight though the shadows only lengthened. 『You’re far too hard on yourself. It’s not like us people on the outside of things will have a nice death or anything. I mean if you follow through on your plan, ven if you happily marry Makoto-chan for a few years you’ll probably be unable to live with the guilt of settling down with him. You’ll return to the battlefield and keep your vow of pacifism for the rest of your life and use your abilities to bring peace, or save fellow child soldiers like you. However, no matter how good you are there’s no way that’ll last you forever. You’ll be shot, or electrocuted, or blasted to bits, captured and tortured you won’t even be able to die screaming from the pain because they’ll have cut your tongue out. Whatever kindness you managed to show won’t be shown in return by your killer, your good deeds and bad deeds won’t matter at all by the time you’ve died. There’ll be nothing but bloody chunks left.』

Kumagawa talked about his beloved older sister like that. The family that he had found after searching and living his entire life with nothing but loss. Yet he still kept smiling the same as ever. He looked like a true maniac, one that threw a knife around casually like the kind in movies as he described her grisly death to her.

Matsuda wanted to speak up and say something, to defend Mukuro from such cruel words but Mukuro did not see fazed. For the first time she stopped looking at her feet and looked back at them.  
  
That was true. That was fate. Her look seemed to say.

『The world has already taken a lot away from you Mukuro-chan, and it’s going to keep taking, and you’ll offer it up because you feel bad. Then, shouldn’t you enjoy what little you’ve found after all this time? Shouldn’t you let yourself get spoiled a little bit? Eat some delicious food and do what we like?』Kumagwa’s usually round eyes sharpened as they looked at Mukuro. Kumagawa usually spoiled her too, she could not remember ever being on the edge of a gaze this sharp. 『Or do you want to return to your previous self so badly?』

 _I don’t deserve to be around Makoto. I don’t deserve to keep living in this world._ Mukuro had been thinking that, but was that so different from what the Mukuro of the past thought? The only person whose world I deserve to share is my sister’s. The only love I deserve is my sister’s twisted love. It’s my only punishment and my only pleasure.

Unsure of how to respond, Mukuro’s eyes looked elsewhere. She tried to find the moon, but Kumagawa’s face appeared in hers first. An annoying younger brother. She had no idea why somebody else had not adopted him before her, he was perfect for the role.

“Hey Misogi-chan, I don’t get it. How am I supposed to accept this? My only family was Junko, and then you and Makoto both appeared. It feels so fake, like I’m being told a lie.”

『Well, I guess we just started calling each other family. It was a lie we told over and over again until it became real to us. It was a lie that changed reality.』  
  
“But… it still started out as a lie.”

『Eh, but I’m a liar so who cares?』  
  
“You know MIsogi-chan. Even though I promised not to kill anybody, didn’t I kill you once in that killing game? Doesn’t that mean the promise that I made to Makoto is a lie now too?”

『Yep, it’s a lie. So, you should just lie and make the promise over again and this time try harder to make it true.』  
  
“If I can just redo it like that, if I can just start all over again that easily…” Mukuro thought of the eighteen years she wasted protecting her sister. She thought she had stepped over those corpses, but now there was a hand enclosing around her. Even though she was standing on solid ground she felt she would sink. She was being weighed down by too many things, their faith in her, their emotions towards her, but she was an empty girl who had thrown away her heart and could no longer receive such heaviness.

Not only that but she had already drowned so many in her efforts to stay afloat. She could see their bodies plummeting further and further. All the reserve course students that were going to be murdered by Junko, they had fallen and sank into the ocean. A burial at sea just like they had might be far too kind for her.

Sink deeper, and deeper into the ocean. Let herself be spoiled like Kumagawa advised her? Hadn’t she been spoiled all along? Didn’t she live without a care in the world before this like human life was nothing as long as she got to be around her family? Did she really change or did she just find new people to obsess over?

She could not think of what to say so she ran. She ran like the se had been forced to run every day to strengthen her body at Fenrir and make her into a killer. She ran like she did when she was told to go into the middle of enemy fire because she was a child and therefore the most expendable. She ran and the world became nothing more than loud noises and the city melted around her to colors.

『Jeez, why do I even bother opening my mouth...』Kumagawa lamented in her absence.  『I guess I’m not me if I don’t make things worse.』  
  
“She was listening to you more than she was me.” Yasuke spoke up.

『Before you go off on another self loathing rant, Yasuke-chan.』  
  
I wasn’t going to do that.

『It’s just I understand her feelings. I also had a sibling I couldn’t save. Well, it’s not like Ajimu-san and I were able to become siblings in the end, and the next time I see her I’m going to kill her.』

“You almost had me at the beginning there and then you ruined it again. Have you ever thought of maybe thinking before you speak?” Yasuke asked.

『Never. Not once in my life.』

Kumagawa paused for a moment when a can of coffee smacked hard into the side of his face. He turned his head to see Kaiki standing there awkwardly.  
  
“Sorry, I thought you were going to catch that.”  
  
It was the only time he had seen Kaiki apologize in his life. Apparently the man wanted to talk to him about something.

 

😈

  
  
The two of them had sat at the back of the establishment. A coffee machine between them. Kumagawa sipped the bitter black liquid. Kaiki this time tossed the coffee can and made it into the basket at the first toss.

『Let me guess, money, money, money, money, some kind of self deprecating joke, money.  Then you’re going to yell at me for trying to help Mukuro-chan.』

“Wow, I don’t even need to be here. You’ve captured my character so well. Truly, you’re no longer a human being just a man performing a role on stage.” Kaiki said, as he bought another soda from the machine. “How does that one girl of yours manage to spend so much money by the way?”

『Like you’re any better. It’s not like you hoard money like Byakuya-chan, you basically gamble, spend it on five star hotels, and burn it all like jet fuel. It doesn’t make any sense at all you’re supposed to be greedy.』  
  
“Kumagawa you’re the one that doesn’t make sense to me. You know they say when you spot a child drowning you’re supposed to get help, not jump in and try to save them. If you do something like that, the odds are you’ll just drown and give no help at all.”

『So what you’re saying we should just let children drown? What a terrible theme!』Kumagawa sipped his coffee. Rather than standing next to Kaiki he had chose to crouch looking away and cutting himself off.  『I know I make things worse by getting involved, I’m not Makoto-chan. And I know I usually only end up hurting myself but... 』  
  
“If I don’t do something then they’ll be lost for sure? You’re not the only one in the equation you know. Did you learn nothing at all from Emukae?”

『Mukae-chan is… you weren’t just lying back then?』  
  
“I’ve never broken my promises to you, have I?”

『That’s true. Neither past nor present, you have ever once lied to me. Then that means… Mukae-chan died… all alone and at random.』  
  
“It was a hit and run.”

『Us minus were never going to have pretty and clean cut endings like in a novel. The cruel and unfeeling chaos of the world suits us better. It’ll probably be the same for me...』  
  
“It had nothing to do with you. You undid your involvement in her life thinking it would save her, that you were specifically what brought doom upon her, but there are people and perspectives that exist outside you, you know.”

『...』  
  
“I’m sure, even if Emukae died either way, she would have been grateful to get to know you. At least in that version of events there was someone who cared about her.”

『...』

“You don’t believe it do you? You don’t believe there’s anyone who could actually want you around. When you hurt yourself, you don’t even think there’s somebody who would possibly care if you got hurt. That’s the default assumption you make all decisions with.”

『Aren’t you the same Kaiki-kun?』Kumagawa crushed the can he held in his hands and twisted the can slowly.  『It’s not that you think nobody in the world can be saved, you just don’t think you’re good enough. If you’re projecting your point of view onto the rest of the world isn’t that a narrative too?』  
  
“That’s not cute at all Kumagawa. The ‘We’re the same’ speech is only cute when a villain does it.”  
  
Kumagawa tossed his can in the trash and left. He did not bother to explain where he was going because Kaiki already knew. There was no way he would leave that girl Mukuro alone.  
  
That was what Kumagawa had been searching for all along. That which everybody else had and he had been deprived of. A family. Kaiki had known that, even when he was just a boy with tangled white hair that followed him around.

He had thought he was not good enough to give the boy the one thing he needed. The boy was violent, thrashing around hurting himself, and hurting others. Kaiki was not afraid of being hurt, he was afraid of being responsible for when the boy hurt himself more.  
  
Interrupting his moody self reflection, just when he was about to get at his gloomiest a cheeful voice spoke up. “Kaiiiiiiki, isn’t that cruel? Telling Kumagawa-senpai lies like that?”

“I didn’t lie.”  
  
“Emukae Mukae-chan is dead. How can that be the truth when I’m talking to you right now?” Suddenly, the air was rotten. Kaiki looked to his side and there was a girl in tattered clothes standing next to him. She held out a phone where the edges were burnt. Quickly she stuffed it away into her pocket.  
  
“What do you want now? Was Gaen-senpai not satisfied dumping so many children on me she needed to add one more?”  
  
“No, Gaen-senpai didn’t tell me to come here. I decided all on my own. I’m going to reunite with Kumagawa-senpai, then instead of wasting all of his time sucking up to those elites, he’s going to pamper me instead So,it’s only a coincidence that I ended meeting up with you first, Kaiki-kun.”  
  
“To think there is such a coincidence. The world is a mysterious place.”  
  
“Yup, mysterious. It’s all senseless and chaotic.” As she said something miserable like that she was absolutely smiling, she looked like the kind of girl that would hang around Kumagawa. “Hey, Kaiki is someone else’s child really that important to you? And your old relationship.”  
  
“It seems you have somewhat of a misunderstanding. Though I don’t feel like fixing it.”  
  
“This isn’t like you, Kaiki. If you start acting out of character, then things really will become senseless, everything will go off script. It’s not like you haven’t experienced such failures before.” That girl sat on the edge of the steps that led up to the back of the bath house both were sitting on, and kicked her legs in a carefree way. “Oh, but it’s not like this isn’t like you either. What about five years ago? When you swindled a pretty big religious cult and crushed it down?”

“Jeez, Gaen-senpai runs her mouth too much. A story with too much exposition is just dull I wish she’d learn to cut out the extravagance already.” He complained, as if he were offended at the accusation of having done something good with his miserable little life.

A long time ago there was an incredibly gloomy man and a gloomy boy. They were both so gloomy they seemed suited for each other in an ill way. When they were together, the scent of rotting got so strong that crows from all over were summoned to watch their misfortune and take turns speculating on when they would finally get to wrestle the meat from the their bones with their beaks.  
  
That gloomy man in all black came to a revelation. As similar as they were they were not the same. They were fundamentally different. That man had resolved to live the rest of his life without love, after the girl he loved died at random of a heart attack right after birth. However, he knew the boy would carry a wound on him for the rest of his life, a wound that would make him crave love the same way everybody else craved oxygen. They could breathe most of the time without even thinking about it, it was already there for them, it sustained them pain free.  
  
That boy was broken and even worse he broke himself further and further. He knew he could not save him, that even if he protected him from the outside world that boy would even try to break himself. All he understood was being broken. It was a fundamental wound that could not be solved from even normal, decent people with good intentions and Kaiki was the opposite of that.  
  
Yet, he left that boy with a trusted friend and tried to look at the origin point. That day he left Kumagawa with Meme Oshino, he put a hand on his shoulder and told a lie. _Kaiki, please don’t leave. I’m sorry I did so many things wrong. I just wanted to stay by your side._ **I was only being paid to take care of you. To babysit you. Now that the money is up, there’s no reason for me to stay around. But it’s troublesome leaving a kid all on their own so let Oshino look after you for a little while.** _Kaiki… all I need to be happy is to stay with you. Please, I can learn to lie! I can help you with your scams. Please. Please. Just stay._ **You’ve already learned to lie, because you were deceived by me. You thought I would stay. You thought I was around for any reason other than money.**

He thought he might come back dead. When he went searching on his own for the origin of that boy’s trauma. When he tried to help others, that was the usual result. He was the kind of character who ended a story getting clubbed in the head by the crowbar, because it would be unwise for karma to let him lived.

Yet, somehow he had lived. At the end of that he returned to find Oshino again. Only, the house was completely empty. _Yeah, the kid ran away a few days after you left.  Guess he’s just a story now._ **Oshino.** _What?_ **I hate you.  
**  
For the first time in his life Kaiki was violent. He did not particularly like it either. He hated hitting others as much as he hated being punched. He was a thin man that was barely there after all. As usual his friend who took everything in stride simply said. _You’re excited. Did something good happen?_

Obviously something good had not happened. Kaiki was involved after all. When he went searching for the kid, he found he had already been discovered by Ajimu Najimi, that annoying old ghost that had bothered their supernatural club in high school.  
  
He left the kid with a business card in case he ever needed him again. That was just cowardice on his part though. If a human failure who only cared about money had failed to do anything for Kumagawa Misogi, he should have known what would happen next from a non-human trying to teach him to be human.  
  
That excited voice cut through his self reflection again. “It was that evil cult that the boy’s parents fell for, or rather, was framed into. It didn’t make you much money, but you chose to crush it for him, right? Hoping those two might come back and fix what was fundamentally broken in Kumagawa. Well, in the end, that boy’s parents moved on to another cult that’s higher-ranked. I bet they’re still living enjoying themselves, having forgotten about that child they recklessly brought into the world… so it solved absolutely nothing.”  
  
“You minus have an interesting view of things. It was a tip for passing by. I merely harassed a religious group I noticed was trying to take a cut of my profits. But well, it’s also true that it didn’t net all that much money, so I don’t care what you think of it. It’s not like I’m at a loss if you start deluding yourself into thinking I’m a good guy. That thing was a failure of a job.”  
  
“And aren’t you going to fail again this time? That’s what Kagenui is worried about. Your well-being. Your body and soul… That Kaiki might act out of character again and make everything worse.”  
  
“I don’t like when an old classmate like that tries to act so patronizingly.”  
  
“Hey, that’s why you didn’t help Kumagawa when he needed it with Ajimu too didn’t you? You drove both of them to a point where they could not continue to live with each other. Wasn’t it because you concluded if you didn’t cut Ajimu out, her suicidal tendencies would rob Kumagawa of a future?”  
  
“There’s a thing called showing not telling you know.”  
  
“Oh, alright I’ll let you moodily stare into the distance so you can have another flash back. You always look so dreamy when you’re thinking about how miserable you are, just like Kumagawa-senpai.”  
  
“You’re just a child, please stop.” Kaiki said.

“Good grief, you’ve taken unwanted action for a mere human.” Ajiu said, as she looked at the room covered in screws. Her own chair that she had been standing upon knocked aside. The rope broken in half.

Kumagawa was clutching a phone holding onto a card. His hand shook so hard he needed to redial the number several times. The boy who was so covered in shadow he was practically faceless, had misery detailed on every single centimeter of his face, his expression was stretched to the point of breaking.  
  
『K-k-k-k-k-k-kaiki-kuuuun, where are you? Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.』  
  
“Well, that’s fine for you have no other option than to kill me, after all. For, Kurokami Medaka is heading up the stairs right now, if you don’t kill me here I’ll kill her the moment she enters the room. And, knowing that, now your only choice is to kill me. You should be accountable for those you save. That is what they call a ‘sense of responsibiltiy is it not’.”  
  
『Anshin’in-san.』  
  
“I’m so happy you gave me that name. I’m so happy you’ll be the last to call it.”

Kumagawa trembled, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Even a river that was always flowing could experience flooding. Is first bond, the first person who had ever cared whether he lived or died, the person he wanted to grow up beside and see the future with all this time she had only been thinking of her own death.  
  
He held onto her arms and trembled, his body over hers, begging. The only line of hope was the phone in his hand, but no matter how many times he redialed the other number refused to pick up.  
  
“ Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.”

『Damn it all! Kaiki! I don’t care anymore so get out here already. I already know what kind of position I’m in so answer the phone.』  
  
“There’s no need to yell.” A voice spoke calmly on the other end. “Didn’t anybody ever teach you manners? You could at least lie and pretend you have some.”

『I’ll pay you. Do something about this.』  
  
“Do something, that’s rather vague.”

『I have money.』  
  
“It’s not a matter of finances.”

『When is it not with you? THAT’S LIKE YOUR WHOLE THING!』  
  
“It’s a personal problem with you. You two are about to kill each other, there’s not a happy ending from this point. There’s no way for everyone to be saved. However, there is a way in which no one gets saved. That is to say, there may be a method for you both to be unhappy. Specifically, you have to… how to put this… rip her face off Kumagawa.”

『What?』  
  
“Her face. Her way of being identified in this world. If nobody can see her, she can’t exist. You only start existing the moment somebody else sees you. If you were to remove that, she’d be gone. She can’t hurt herself anymore.”

Ajimu Najimi’s eyes shook as she overheard the two of them casually discussing her fate. They rolled around in her skull like wild searching for a way out of this situation. That 'real thing' she was searching for, that she wanted to feel to the point of death, she was being denied it once again. What she felt was neither hope nor despair, but a disappointment that plunged her feelings, down, down, into the unfathomable abyss of Kumagawa Misogi.   
  
“A husk with no shadow, and no form, not even a name left to her and nobody will be able to remember her. And as for you, you wouldn’t be forgiven, for ripping a girls’ face off, for stealing her existence away. It’d suit you well.”  
  
“Stop spouting on. I don’t want to live. Why would I want to live without a face?”

Kumagawa had already thrown away the phone, slowly he started to walk towards her. She saw his shadow growing, lengthening from his feet, until it was cast over her like it would consume her. Ajimu tried to struggle but the screws were holding her in place.   
  
“I want to die. I want to die by your hand. Kill me! Hurry up and put an end to me! I do not wish to live any longer. Kumagawa… Kumagawa… my foolish little brother.”  
  
She was finally able to call him that.  
She was finally able to speak true of her feelings, just before the end. Wasn't that enough? After billions of years wasn't that enough? She found something real at the end of her jounrey, she was able to die with attachment and regrets like everything else.   
All of these feelings that everybody else was full with on a daily basis, those colors that human beings seemed to be able to express on every single level of the spectrum even the colors they could not see their lives were filled with it, but she was a solitary, colorless pure white existence.  
Even her though after all this time had been dyed with color by Kumagawa, even if it was just the drip, drip, drip of blood falling on her from above and splattering like paint. If it permanently stained her, if it spread like blood falling into drops of pure white snow she would be happy.   
She was able to feel so many things, but she knew it would only last in this one moment. In this one moment of high emotion. Then it would be good as soon as she blinked. That was what watching meant. That was why she wanted to more than anything else dwell in this moment for the rest of her life, to extend this moment of emotion into eternity, to die so she could be forever in this moment where Kumagawa's hand reaching into her chest to crush her heart would finally make her able to feel his warmth. 

『Even so I want you to live.』  
  
Yet, he denied her. He denied her everything. Every emotion flowing through her right now was denied. She was going to be cut off, even worse than before.   
  
That boy she had found that boy she thought might be interesting was cradling her in his arms. She thought he was the one trembling until she felt it was herself. Kumagawa was oddly still instead. Like a vast unmoving stretch of water. She was... trembling? Afraid? Feeling things she had never felt before, feeling things she could not feel right until the end.   
  
“Please….Please be so kind as to kill me. Please kill me and forget about me. Think of it as saving me.”

『I’m sorry, Ajnshin’in-san. I can’t save you. I was the wrong person to save you, we were wrong, from the moment we met.』  
  
He said such a thing, cradling her face gently. His finger moved down it tracing the gentle feminine contours. Leaning forward his lips twitched as if to kiss her. His entire face flushed. He closed his eyes in a moment of hesitation.  Then suddenly he bit down hard, hard onto her face, twisting his body like a wild animal. Her flesh itself made a horrifying _squelch_ noise and he ripped it off. He heard the sound of her flesh tearing, he saw strips of flesh stretching to their limit ad breaking as his eyes had cracked open just enough to peer through it. He thought it was wrong to look away. He had wanted to say what kind of face she would show him at this moment of betrayal, this moment of failure, this ultimate disappointment of her expectations for him. For a moment he did not see what lay behind her face. He thought it was just some movie prop, or like the dummies that were kept in the biology room. However after he realized what it was he could see it. The lumps of flesh after her face had been torn off. The skeleton behind her face, looking empty. Her eye holes just husks. An image that would be burned into his retinas forever.

At that moment Kaiki had deduced that Kumagawa had simply got himself stuck in another parasitic relationship. That that would be his tendency for the rest of his life. He suggested an amputation, to cut it away before it became cancerous and devoured him.  
  
In the present day Kaiki’s sunken in and baggy eyes narrowed. “Yeah, that’s right. You’re correct. I  was actually a really good guy. I was actually a kind hearted soul that thought about kids like that. I was only playing the bad guy. You sure know a lot. How’d you know about all that?” Suddenly he turned his serious eyes on her. “But please don’t tell anyone, I’ll be embarrassed.”  
  
He told a joke, covering his cheeks like that. Except there was not any color on his face at all,he looked as deathly pale as always.  
  
“That was a failure as well. You didn't understand the feelings of Kumagawa who pined for a family.”  
  
“Yeah, that was it, it was just a misunderstanding. Man, I totally didn’t understand all the way back then! That explains away everything, I don’t need to feel guilty anymore! I should be careful not to repeat the same errors.” He stood up and faced away from her, hands in the pocket of his black coat. “Tragedy is just bad things happening to good people, right? Yup life is continuing I better keep doing my best.”  
  
“Have you been this gloomy all your life?”  
  
“That’s right. My personality is really like this all my life. It’s so tragic, terribly tragic, being this terrible and self absorbed.”  
  
“Maybe you don’t know what you’re actually doing yourself.”  
  
“Is there anyone out there that knows what they’re doing in their own mind? LIke you… why are you having this conversation with me.”  
  
“I’m sure you can help Kumagawa. I’m sure you can deceive him. But in times like this. You always fail. You’re just like Kumagawa-senpai in that regard, that’s why I like you a little bit too. Though you could spoil me a bit more.”  
  
“No thanks, spoiling children costs too much money.”

A fragile looking kid.  
No matter how many times he looked at Kumagawa, that was all he saw.  
That was all he could ever see.

 

😈

 

When Enoshima Junko finally found her sister who had gone to wander away in the middle of the night they were standing in front of a river. Mukuro leaned on the guard that prevented her from tumbling down into the river.  
  
“God, Mukuro when did you become such a drama queen. Don’t you know that’s supposed to be my thing?”

  
“...”  
  
“Well if you’re going to drown yourself or something then go ahead, I’ll watch and laugh at you. You’ll probably sink right to the bottom because of how fat you are.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Still what are you blabbing about? Oh of course I heard you pretentious little monologue, about how it all went to waste. Jeez, pretending that your services for the sake of despair were a waste, when your little sister tried so hard to make you useful, how ungrateful can you be.”

“...”  
  
“It didn’t go to waste Mukuro. Look, see.” Junko dug around in her purse for a moment. She pulled out a bundle of old looking envelopes. Mukuro stared quietly for a moment as they were forced into her hands.  
  
_The letters?_

Her sister had sent her several letters, somehow finding her when she ran off to Fenrir. No matter where the group moved to, Junko tracked their movements perfectly and sent letters. They were full of insults calling her ungrateful and stupid for running away. They also had instructions for her to write back.  
  
Mukuro did the best she could, trying to write about her daily feelings. However no matter what she wrote, the next letter Junko sent would be full of insults not even responding to a single question Mukuro had asked Junko about her life. She always assumed she did not even read the letters. She might even have burned them, like a wicked stepmother, or witch migh in a movie.  
  
Yet here they were in her hands right now. They were kept in Junko’s purse where she kept her other most precious things, her make up and bedazzled cell phone. Such a thing her sister had kept so close to her all this time. The envelopes were worn like they had been touched and opened many times.  
  
“Why… is it always like this? Why do you have to keep giving me tiny hints that you care? This time… and when you tried to stop me.. And when I asked you to show me on Jabberwock too… why do you keep stringing me along?” Mukuro did not smile, holding onto this treasured memory of the past. She did not even give a small twitch under her eye, which is what only Junko recognized as her sad face. Instead her pupils shook, her mouth fell hung open and became distorted, empty looking, the corners of it twisted, her face wrinkled in a horrible look of sorrow and agony that rocked her whole body with it. The emotionless girl felt with every single fiber of her being, and the pained showed on her face for all to see, concealing nothing.

Then she cut it all off at once. She returned to a completely neutral expression. She severed that heart that had become far too heavy for her to carry. “It’d be better if you didn’t care about me at all. If you really did see as nothing more than a mindless tool. I just want you to think nothing of me at all. It’s because… it only you didn’t give a damn like mom and dad. I’m in so much pain right now because you care about me!”  
  
Mukuro picked up the letters and threw them into the river. She watched them flutter through the air and sink. As she did, a smile spread across her lips. A true smile. The one she had always wanted to show Makoto and Kumagawa. She felt relief. The weight had lifted just a little bit. “If only I really was just a girl who could only kill! If only it was true I didn’t have a family, and you didn’t care about anything besides despair and were only using me! I’d be happy! I’d be so happy! I’d be laughing so carelessly like you always do! It’d be ecstasy!”  
  
Mukuro laughed. Junko had spent her entire life by her sister’s side, but she was not sure she had ever heard her sister laugh so loud. Her burden had lightened up a little bit. As she laughed she remembered a memory of the past. That’s right there was one person who had found out she was sending these letters to her sister. A woman in Fenrir who had always paid such special attention to her.

 _You always looked like you didn’t care about a single thing in the world. I’ve finally found what will motivate you. I’ve finally found a reason for you to fight. Fight, or I’ll kill that sister of yours.  
_  
That was right. There was a reason she could not take a single bullet on the field, she could not fail even once. She loved her sister sooo sooo much. And though that sister would never show it, that love was returned too.

Enoshima Junko raised her hand. Before she could strike the other girl, somebody appeared from the shadow and gripped her behind the wrist. 『Junko, your roots are showing. Dye your hair again already!』Kumagawa said, appearing behind her smiling as always.  
  
“What? Nooooo, no way, the world can’t know I’m not a blonde.”

『They also can’t know you’re mentally twenty five right now.』  
  
“Forever seventeen!”

『You’re eighteen at least, I was there for your birthday!』  
  
“I was never born! I was spawned into existence to counter balance a world with too much happiness!  I just showed up out of nowhere fully formed, I have no backstory, like Hisoka!”  
  
“Misogi-chan just leave me alone. At least be humane. You’re not cruel like Junko is.” Mukuro said, looking at the two of them as she backed away and hit the railing. She looked behind to see the river that had already carried away the letters she had thrown away. Or so she thought.  
  
In an instant, Kumagawa climbed over the railing. He jumped inside and started to search around in the water. Mukuro immediately saw back to the last time Kumagawa had been in a river, when his body had been found on the shore clutching Junko’s.  
  
She grabbed onto the railing to climb over, but before she could Junko’s claws were in the back of her shirt.  
  
Kumagawa was pushed by the rushing water, and had to dive his head under a few times only to come gasping up. The boy himself was a river, his footing was weak, he was easily swept away, everything he touched washed away so why was he bothering.  
  
He plunged his head down into murky water he could barely see in the low light of the night. His hands fumbled around, not even knowing what he was looking for. Finally, out of breath, shivering, he dragged himself out of the water.  
  
When he tripped on a stone and started to fall back in, before he even could a hand snatched him away and she saw Junko dragging him back up.

『I’m sorry, I only got one.』Kumagawa said as he handed her a dripping enveloped. Mukuro looked at it for a moment, and then wanted to hide. She suddenly ran at him, burying her head in his chest. 『You feel guilty because Makoto-chan got hurt because of you, because fighting’s the one thing your good at and you couldn’t stop Munakata. 』  
  
“It’s heavy.”

『I know...』  
  
“No you don’t.”

『I’m a disappointment too, remember?』  
  
“No you’re not. Misogi-chan even Junko keeps watching you, you’re not disappointing. It’s different for me.”

『I’m not talking about you two sisters. Remember… Ajimu-san said once, that I was the first human being she ever had expectations for, and she later found those expectations to be disappointed.』

“...Kumagawa you don’t talk about…if it's painful don't...just tell a lie like you always do.”

『When she found me. She thought. This boy could kill me. In the end though, even though it was her deepest wish I couldn’t grant it. Even if she hurt me, even if she tortured me, even if she threatened to kill Medaka-chan and all the others I would never have killed her, because at the time she was the closest thing to family I had.』  
  
Kumagawa trembled but it was not from the water. She knew because his embrace was still warm. Even though he was already soaked to the bone, she felt tears welling up in her eyes. The girl who had forgotten how to cry, who had tossed aside her heart.  
  
“I couldn’t save… I couldn’t save my family so it was useless…”

『What are you talking about? Your family is right here.』  
  
“Speak for yourself, Misogi.”

『Junko, I see a wrinkle underneath one of your eyes.』  
  
“Wait, shit are you serious?”  At that, Junko’s voice softened. “Don’t go crying now, big sis. You’ll look lame.” She said as she approached from behind, leaning against Kumagawa and Mukuro together.

『Even if nobody else thinks so, I’m happy you lived until this point.』  
  
“It’s heavy…” She muttered again.

『I know, but between the three of us it’s less heavy. You killed all those people so you’ve got no choice but to live on, that’s our punishment. So basically, we’re stuck together.』  
  
The three of them.  
The despair trio.  
What a lame title. It only worked when it was despair sisters, it was only cool that way, now the three of them were just lamely clinging onto one another.

『Hey, hey Mukuro-chan. Did you hear the story of the first two human beings?』  
  
“Huh…?”

『They ate the fruit and were punished together. That’s why humans live their lives steeped in misery. They gained the knowledge to be aware of how miserable they were. Isn’t that a wonderful story?』  
  
“And then afterwards one of the siblings murdered the other sibling, and soaked the earth in their blood that’s my favorite part of the story.”

『Junko you’re not helping. You're going to get a gray hair if you keep acting so unpleasant. You know, I have a big sister Mukruo-chan, she's really strong. 』  
  
"Oh, you have a sister too? My little sister is a trashy man-eater with flashy, pinkish blonde hair and gaudy fake nails. She's incredibly fickle and makes bad choices. And my little brother is completely helpless, but instead of trying to help himself he always sticks his nose in other people's business." 

As the three of them continued on like that, they found some sort of stability. Considering the person both of the despair sisters was clinging to in that moment was Kumagawa however, it was obviously not going to last long.  
  
Right then Mukuro heardd a noise from a lamp post. She saw a shape jump through the air, and then plow right into Kumagawa Misogi knocking him into the ground and dragging him through it. She landed perfectly on his head, a woman in platform shoes, with a black and red bob hair cut, and a star in her head.  
  
Violence personified.  
The living incarnation of violence.  
The woman that even Gaen Izuko who knows everything could not control. Junko and Mukuro were able to recognize that about her on sight, just from the massively imposing aura she had. The only person they had both met before in their life who projected so much strength was Kurokami Medaka’s.  
  
Standing on the lost child they had found as a family member in the most unexpected place, standing right on his face, was Kagenui Yozuru. Another oddity specialist, an unbelievably odd adult.

“Yo, Mukuro, it’s been awhile. Did you miss your big sister?”  
  
“...Kagenui-s-s-san.”  
  
Junko was not sure she had heard her sister’s voice shake so much dealing with anybody else besides her. That great wolf became nothing more than a timid puppy again, her tail stuffing itself between her legs.  
  
“I’ve come to make good on that promise I made to you so long ago. Kaiki is taking so long, and Izuko’s betting everything on an unreliable guy like him so I decided to just solve everything myself.”  
  
“What are you doing?” Junko asked, thoroughly confused for once.  
  
“I should explain. Since you and Kumagawa are the ones at fault here, since it’s always Enoshima Junko whose behind everything, I’ve decided the best thing to do to solve the story is just to kill the antagonists.”

That woman stood up fully, still standing on her boyfriend’s face.  
  
“Yozuru Kagenui the unbelievably violent woman who only kills for justice. Nice to meet you!”


	23. Her Tragedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intro is a reference to Tsukimonogatari

Ajimu Najimi is like a doll. Perfect in her construction, born with everything, lacking nothing.

To put it in another way she’s not human.  
Not a person. Not an organism. Not ordinary.  
That is Ajimu Najimi, a Non-Human Who Is Just Impartial.  
In a story that goes on and on about the dichotomy between hope and despair she’s filled with both and neither at once. She’s the strongest character in the story but she hardly does anything but sit back and watch. How lazy can you get?   
  
By appearance, she is a cute high school girl eccentric in speech and actions. Though, she is amusing, always smiling, pleasant student her true nature is that of an aberration. Abnormal and irrational, someone who exists to give a middle finger to the laws of physics. As a scientist myself whose thoroughly on the scientific side of the world I don’t really appreciate the insult.  
  
A monster. A phantom. She is one of those evil spirits. Ajimu Najimi claims to have memories from trillions of years ago, and when she makes that claim she’s not lying. Yet, at the same time she seems to be exactly the type of character that would be the project of human imagination, as if her backstory was back written for her into time itself. The kind of person who blends the borderline between imaginary and real, so much so it even drove her insane at one point and she lost sight of it. Because of that, she is hopelessly incompatible with human society.  
  
“No. You know in reality it’s not the case. In her case. Because she originated from human imagination, so in her structure, she resembles that of a human. She pretends to be human. What a poser.”  
  
My annoying childhood friend told me that when I asked her about Ajimu's true nature. She tends to butt in give her thoughts even when nobody asked.  
  
Does that mean that she’s striving to be human…? That she’s doing her best to try and become human? Thinking that I ask. However, according to Junko who won’t shut up, that’s not quite it either. Apparently, the fact that she pretends to be one is apparently proof that she isn’t trying.

In the end, it is merely the means to blend into human society. It is only a means to become compatible so therefore not a means to assimilate.  
  
Junko said this.   
  
“No matter how much you learn a foreign language, and how hard you study, and speak it fluently… That alone is still only a means to communicate with those of another country. It does not necessarily equal an effort to change your nationality. It’s the same thing. How she was created in the likeness of humans, is not to be a human, nor to become a human. It is to be together with humans.”

In other words no matter how much Junko dyes her hair and puts on a valley girl act, she’s never going to become a natural blonde, tragically.

Not to be, not to become, but to be together with…  
  
“In the first place you know. Why do apparitions in legends, or in other words so-called metamorphic monsters take the shape of humans or of animals? To sum it up, it is an existence in unreality, yet bases its shape on things that actually exist in reality. You’ve never really thought about it?”  
  
Junko asked that question of me.   
  
That is well, if I can say so, perhaps I've only been on the science side of things. As Kumagawa would say all this supernatural stuff is just nonsense to me. The limitations of human imagination, of the human brain. Humans can only speak about reality using words they know, Sapir-Whorf would think so at least.   
  
“In the end. The apparition is one thanks to the people…One that exists because humans exist. If there is nobody to observe nobody is being observed.” In other words they’re stuck in a box, or maybe even a coffin. Junko said with an impish grin. Since she's basically satan.   
  
Enoshima Junko figured that out in a few minutes, it’s not wonder even the abnormal is abnormally boring to her.  Could trying to understand Ajimu Najimi similar to sympathizing with a doll?. Well, living or not, sympathy exists for things that are not human all over the world. That’s why ghost stories are told all over the world.  
  
To be honest, I thought I was tired of all these stories.  Of encountering other people. The Childhood friend. The childhood friend’s sister. The Childhood friend's new lover. The lover boy’s friends from middle school. The doll. Thinking back, we all thought it would be solved when we fished those idiots out of the program. I was planning to kill myself after I finished with that, I thought my debts would be repaid. Dying in a boring way, where Junko could not see it, where she could feel nothing at all about it, mourned by no one.  
  
However, instead I got dragged into a bunch of new encounters. I wonder how much longer things like this will continue.  For the fights that Kumagawa Misogi endlessly throws himself in, for the leftover schemes of Junko that we encounter one after another, feeling that trickery is starting to no longer work as a solution, I also feel despair from that.

However, such a feeling is a luxury. The luxury that it will continue forever. Such a thing does not exist in this world. Every story is marked by “The End” at some point. Oh, did you expect me to finish off with such a condescending lesson? I’m just kidding. Even when a story hits the end, you can pick up a new one. There’s almost an infinite amount of stories in the world. Even if it’s a lesson that you have to learn whether you want to or not, just don’t learn it. You don’t have to accept endings at all, that’s what fanfiction is for.  
  
An idiot I know would say 『Just pretend you’re immortal until the very end, that your story is important, that you matter. It’s a human thing to do to impose your self importance on the universe. That’s just another story well tell ourselves. To be human isn’t to accept limitations, to accept endings, it’s to continue imagining past that forever.』 If only she had listened to his words. Even if it was a childish wish she should have understood, they were childhood friends after all.  
  
This isn't a lengthy introduction, I'm just procrastinating. I don't know how to give a eulogy. 

 

😈

 

Hitoyoshi Zekichi the designated hero of her story had thrown himself into a rematch with the super high school level boxer. Those who had worked their way up to the top of the mountain with talent, clung to talent more than anything else. It was the ultimate proof against the world that they were weak, that they were insignificant.  
  
Juzo meant no harm he really did not. He was fighting for exactly the same reason that Hitoyoshi Zenkichi did. Those two idiots had yet to learn the lesson about protecting the people you love, and what a terrible idea it is. Source: Matsuda. They were the right hands of two different school presidents, they lacked any strong philosophy of their own, but they fought for the sake of that person.  
  
Kurokami Medaka believed that enemies needed to be saved. That was why even learning what Mukuro did as a killer, hero boy Zenkichi was able to jump into the fight for her sake in order to protect her. Even enemies needed to be saved sometimes. It was a naive belief. Zenkichi did not think that naivete needed to be crushed by the world, because it was part of what made Medaka herself. She had already been used as basically a servant for the benefit of the world for all of her youth, an heir, a genius, a philantrophist, Zenkichi wanted to preserve what few things as a person she had left.  
  
Juzo too was fighting to protect. Munakata had a reputation for getting his hands dirty, but Juzo believed in his heart, not in the strong Munakata that crushed everything, but the gentle friend that he had known in his high school years. If only he was stronger, if only he could be relied upon more, than Munakata could have gone back to smiling that gentle way that he only showed Juzo. A rough guy like Juzo with a no good personality, got to see such a face. It was entirely his fault and he knew it. Munakata had the world on his shoulders, but it was Juzo’s own incompetence that dumped it there. Being strong was all he was good for, but every time he tried to be strong for that one man, he screwed it up worse and worse each time. It was not the world that was his enemy, it was his most trusted friend that was sabotaging him. The moment Munakata found out he would be crushed. He was not unfriendly as Makoto believed him to be, in fact the opposite was true, he put everything of himself into his friends, but he only had two, two friends in the whole world that were his world. He was not Makoto who seemed to care about almost everyone equally. That was the difference.  
  
Juzo could pick all that up. He was rather thoughtful for a brute, but he was not the kind of guy that was employed to think. At this moment too he knew Zenkichi was an overeager kid, he was not a terrorist, nor a traitor. However, he was afraid what happened to Munakata in the past, that bitter and cynicism might break him. If that was the case it was better to be intentionally broken by someone who gave half a shit, then to get blindsided somewhere down the line. That was Juzo’s thoughts anyway. He was not the type of person to be thoughtlessly cruel, he just did not feel like holding back.  
  
For some reason at this moment when he saw Zenkichi’s punch coming at him and he swiftly dodged, he remembered a boy named Hajime Hinata who he had scared off using a similiar method. Whatever happened to that kid? He hope he was alright.  
  
“Hey, kid since you have no idea what you’re dealing with as a handicap I’ll only use one arm.” He weaved to the right and then struck forward with everything he had. THe first thing to do was force Zenkichi who traditionally used his kicks to fight with his hands. He bought up both to block with.  
  
Juzo took wide shots, not really aiming for Zenkichi. He wanted to make him blink, make him aware of how powerful a hit would be if he connected. Zenkichi every single time for one of these blows brought up both hands again in order to block. As long as he kept it to simple boxing, none of the surprises or cheap moves that these strange sandbox kids seemed to use he was supremely confident.  
  
Just then Zenkichi seemed to read his movements though. The boy twisted his entire body to the side and brought up his fist in a blow aimed squarely at the side of his face. Juzo decided in that moment it was time to stop showboating. Better than _I can finish this with one hand_ is _I can finish this without taking any hits._ No matter what he did not think Zenkichi would be able to reach him. His words, his ideals, and most importnatly his fists. He had to deny his entire being, so the kid did not go attempting something as dangerous as sticking his neck out for terrorists just because his girlfriend has some lofty ideals. His arm that was hanging on his side, he brought it up to block. Zenkichi’s fist hit an unbrekable wall.  
  
Fist hit against fist. His head was slightly turned behind his fist, observing the effort in Zenkichi’s face. He was probably planning to catch him off guard with that blow, really what a plucky kid.  
  
“I’m glad I was able to get you to take me seriously. I’m going to become an adult soon which means I’ll have to start taking things seriously, devil serious style.”  
  
_You’re not using any style of boxing._ Juzo wanted to say but it didn’t seem cool in the moment. He took a few steps back after breaking the standoff. He stared at the inside of his hand, keeping quiet.  
  
Zenkichi kept talking, friendly as ever. “You can stop showing off now. That’s supposed to be my thing, besides even though you’re always projecting this image I think you’re plenty confident as it is.”  
  
“Fine, if you want to see it so badly. I’ll show you you’re out of your league.” He threw off the black jacket outfit and let it fall behind him, like a boxer might throw off a cape. It just seemed like the right thing to do as he brought his hands up once more.

Zenkichi ran at him with everything he had. Juzo spotted a hole in his stance, looking at his stomach the exact punch that had downed Naegi in one try. Zenkichi smiled, seemingly catching onto his intentions. He threw a left hook right at his face going on the offensive ratther than the defensive. Juzo did not even bother to defend or block this time. He threw a punch with his right hand, traveling past Zenkichi’s left. It was simple, no matter how much effort Zenkichi put into his punch it was an absolute rule that Juzo would be able to punch faster, and punch harder. His fist plowed hard into the side of Zenkichi’s face and he twisted it further, not holding back anything. _His feelings of humiliation from Junko, his feelings of hatred towards Kumagawa, and most of all himself. The him that he saw in Zenkichi._ The man who just wanted to protect Munakata, who caused him nothing but trouble because he was no good no matter how hard he tried. From one try hard to another, he put everything in that hit.  
  
Zenkichi’s entire body froze as he started to fall. He had been hit hard enough to cause his head to start bleeding.A knockout blow. The entire side of his face felt crushed, and he spat out blood on the floor. Zenkichi started to struggle to stand up again as Juzo already turned his back. “Hey, get back here. I’m not done yet!”  
  
“It’s over… You won’t be able to stand after that.”

Zenkichi spat blood as he stared at his own trembling hand that had gone numb. This was the type of scene where as the count down started, the plucky young hero forced themself to stand up through sheer force of will alone. Zenkichi tried it, but he could not even control his fingers any more, let alone the muscles in his leg, the entire side of his body was going numb and the only thing he could feel moving was his face which twitched flashing between emotions. But nobody was there even to see it, as Juzo had already turned his back on him and left the room completely certain of his victory.  
  
Komaeda was fond of telling him a certain story. There was once a boxer that started out in his high school years with no background and not natural talent at all for boxing. However, he believed that he could use effort to make up the difference. He loathed talent and those who had been working towards one thing with singular focus and drive all their lives. He loved boxing though, he had fallen in love with it late in the game but he gave it everything he had. Within three years of grueling practice he graduated from high school and was scouted. There was buzz about him as the try-hard king. His first fight happened to be against a so-called Super High School Level Boxer Sakakura Juzo.  
  
The fight was a complete knock out, not only did Juzo win, he hit so hard that brain damage resulting from the blows put the try-hard king in a terrible condition. He could never box again. Done before it even started. Talent was a reckless thing, it crushed far more dreams than it ever supported. As Zenkichi lost consciousness, he could only think of such a devastating loss. He hoped he would not make Medaka-chan cry again. Ajimu was always warning him not to do that.

Sakakura finally caught up to Munakata in the hallway. By the tie he saw Munakata’s back though, Makoto and Mukuro had already escaped and Munakata was left muttering to himself. There had to be something he could say, something he could do to save Munakata in that moment. Just like the words that had saved him.

_I think you overvalue me and undervalue yourself too much, that’s why you keep staring at me like I’m the sun and all that stuff. But I know that you’re amazing, and the truth is you’re a really bright fun guy! You just don’t let anybody else see that side of you. I want you to become my strength because you’re much stronger than I am, Juzo. You’re brighter too, so please guide me._

The words that had saved him, a no good guy who only knew how to be violent. He already knew why he never showed that side of himself around everybody else but… there was no way he could ever tell Munakata.  
  
That was why he could not even come up with a single thing to say to Munakata in that moment. _Talentless people are parasites clinging to those stronger than them._ Then what am I he wondered? He could cling to Munakata all he wanted, but the moment the guy needed him all he did was turn a blind eye. He averted his eyes, unable to look at Munakata’s pain much longer.  
  
He decided the kid would probably be unconscious by now, ad went to grab Zenkichi to drag him to the hospital. He hoped this time around they did not end up with brain damage. “Maybe Kurokami in her prime would have been able to handle this, but her current version isn’t up to snuff. You should let Munakata handle it.”

 _Her current version? Her Prime? Medaka-chan just wanted to pursue her own happiness for a bit._ Zenkichi thought as he lost consciousness. _I should have been able to protect that wish._

 

😈

 

“Good news you’ve got brain damage.” Due to Izuru’s emotionless voice giving him the news the moment he woke up, Zenkichi could not tell if he was being sarcastic or not.  
  
As his eyes slowly peeled awake he saw a smiling boy with white hair spiraling in every direction, his chin resting on the foot of his bed. “Good for you Hitoyoshi-kun, we’re brain damage buddies now.”  
  
Zenkichi reached for his glasses, the ones he had been wearing to look more mature after finishing his training with Anshin’in-san only to find they were on the table next to him, completely smashed. They must have been knocked off his face when he was knocked down in one blow.  
  
“You’re lucky Sakakura just gave you detention.”  
  
“How much detention?”  
  
“He wrote for life on the slip.” Kamukura said, his tones as dull as usual.

“Awe man I wanted to do something with my life.” Zenkichi grumbled. The reality of his beatdown had not sunk in on him yet. Not until he tried to sit up and pain racked his body. When he was stabbed in the back with swords, when he was fighting Kumagawa and bitten by snakes, when he fell in iron bars, for some reason all of those ridiculous scenarios felt unreal compared to the pain in this moment. Just from one single punch.  
  
“Well that was your first mistake. Didn’t I tell you over and over again that on your own you’d eventually reach your limit, and all that effort you put into charging ahead blindly would result in you running face first into a wall.” Komaeda said, looking rather smug in his assertions.  
  
“Hmm, there’s a trash goblin sitting at the foot of my bed lecturing me about talent, could it be possibly that Komaeda is having… an emotion?” As usual though, Zenkichi seemed to masterfully take Komaeda’s mood swings in stride, perhaps because he had crafted so much of himself to suit that woman’s whims.  
  
“I don’t have feelings, or rather my feelings are inherently worthless and therefore-” before he could even start there was a red eye glaring at him. “Okay, I confess, I do have emotions. What a terrible thing you’ve forced me to admit, you’re the worst Hitoyoshi-kun.”  
  
_Komaeda is just concerned for me, because I’m an idiot who doesn’t have any concern for himself._ Zenkichi thought as he reached up to rub at his head. He felt bandages and looked to a window to confirm, half of his face had been bandaged up. _I look like Naze-san._ “Haha very funny guys you gotta get these bandages off of me before Medaka-chan sees or else she’ll get worried.”  
  
“You should worry about yourself a little bit. That way you won’t have to force that monstrously talented girl to waste any more time on you than she already does.” Komaeda said, standing up at that moment probably just so he could look down at Zenkichi to further his point.  
  
His eyes were ice cold but as usual they did little to penetrate Zenkichi’s warmth. “Thanks Komaeda, but I’m already well aware exactly how undeserving I am of her time.” Medaka protected friends and enemies, and it seemed Zenkichi could protect neither friends nor enemies. He hid behind the strength of an overly strong girl. He changed the subject, not thinking that he or his shortcomings were worth talking about much. “What are you doing here anyway?”  
  
“I’ve been in and out of the hospital pretty much the entire time.”  
  
“...Is something wrong?” Zenkichi immediately bristled in concern.  
  
“Several overlapping things are wrong, so much so your mother can’t make up her mind but I doubt it’s anything different than usual.”

Zenkichi was the one who pushed Komaeda to start seeking medical treatment again. Until that point he had been living with his classmates hiding his condition, it was easy enough for someone as disliked as him to pass it off as mere social dysfunction. His inability to read signals. Most people just overlooked him as _that’s just him being Komaeda again._

Komaeda had been a sickly child, his hair had turned white when he was young due to his frailty alone. He did not feel any concern, or rather he was so used to being concerned that Kamukura’s and Hitoyoshi’s overlapping efforts to analyze him just felt like they were being fussy. Komaeda wondered if most people lived their lives without being repeatedly analyzed over and over again on a day to day basis, how must that feel?  
  
“Well you sandbox kids are superhuman…” Izuru began.  
  
“Like you should be talking.”  
  
“I am talking that’s why I’m giving you advice. Your body has limits too. You don’t have to constantly push yourself so you can transform into something your not.” It was good adviced. Well intentioned. Serious in nature as ever Izuru was genuinely trying to live with his faults.  
  
It was too bad Zenkichi stopped listening as Medaka burst in the door at that moment. “Zen… Kichi…? Have you seen Shiranui?”  
  
“Ah, ah, Medaka-chan! Hold on a minute it’s not what you think! I wasn’t planning on being within ten meters of you. Ah, now that you mention it it’s odd I haven’t seen Shiranui. Usually every time I wipe out like this she’s the first one laughing at me when I wake up.” Zenkihchi’s face went from the slight blush of sickness to a full fluster as he began to freak out.  
  
Before he could do anything though, Medaka ran past both Komaeda and Kamukura thowing her arms around him and lifting him out of the bed princess style. “I was looking for Shiranui all over, and Mogana, Asahina, Unzen, Ishimaru, and nobody even remembers her name!”  
  
“Shiranui, the best friend? Well, I have a habit of remembering things that no one else seems to remember.” Komaeda in the background twirled a white curl around his finger.  
  
“Why would I forget her? I had to spend several boring months programming a retrieval program for her. You should be careful with Zenkichi though he’s... ” Unlike Hinata Hajime who did not think much of all about Kurokami Medaka except that she intimidated him, Izuru was easily able to speak with her. They had fought several times before this after all. However whether she would listen to his quiet and calm voice was another thing entirely.  
  
Medaka still kept clinging to Zenkichi even after he had gotten on his feet. “Medaka-chan. Um… What is it this time? Is it my fault for getting injured… Umm…” He still had not told her about Mukuro and Makoto’s disappearance either. He wanted to handle the problems plagueing the school without interrupting Medaka enjoying her fun school life for the first time. Even if enjoying herself took the form of a rampage.  
  
“I’m so glad. Zenkichi, very glad. That shiranui is still inside of you, I’m truly happy.”  
  
Zenkichi forgot about his own problems in an instant looking down at her. Even though she was not shedding tears for his sake something had greatly upset her. “Come on, Medaka-chan phrasing. Don’t get so worked up, there has to be someone who knows what’s going on.”  
  
He felt bad for making such a joke in front of his fiancee who wanted a pure relationship. Another reason he was unworthy of her. He had no idea at all what was happening, or what was upsetting her so much. He had gotten wrapped up in his own issues. Charging in and fighting was so much easier than this.  
  
Before he could even comfort her though, Medaka’s mood changed on a dime as she wiped her own tears and let go of him. “There has to be somebody who must know. I just haven’t asked around enough yet.” Then just like always she was about to take off running ahead of him.  
  
Zenkichi stood up and stretched, even though it felt like walking around with a cinder block on his back. “Wait, Medaka-chan do you have any advice for me?”  
  
“Umm… DIY! Do your best!” Medaka gave a thumbs up and ran off.  
  
“Don’t you mean do it yourself. I don’t think she even noticed I was injured.” Zenkichi said scratching the back of his head as he went to pick up his glasses, even with the frames empty he was just wearing them to look cool anyway.  
  
Komaeda looked back to Kamukura. “I bet he wanted her to worry about him.”  
  
“Medaka-chan has gotten better at understanding human hearst, but she’s still just as bad at understanding her childhood friend.” Kamukura looked back to Komaeda.  
  
Zenkichi glared at both of them. “Hey you two quit gossiping. Like you’re any better really. Hey, are you guys boyfriends?”  
  
“No we’re not.” Komaeda said.  
“Yes we are.” Kamukura said.  
  
They both looked at one another, but where they were looking was slightly off.

“That was a dirty trick.” Kamukura said, glaring at Zenkichi. “I thought you were supposed to be a good guy like Makoto.”  
  
“If I was good all the time then we’d just be the exact same person. I need to play dirty every down again to mix it up, for style points.” Zenkichi said flashing a smile as he went to follow after Medaka.  
  
“Your Kumagawa is showing…” Izuru muttered under his breath as he grabbed the hand of his boyfriend and also not boyfriend who had gotten stuck in his own head explaining to himself what their relationship was. Komaeda had at least two friends now, and he had Hinata, but he would die before admitting either of those things. No, rather because he lived on the brink of death it was hard for him to admit, to give value to things he might lose, he had been trying to see everything as worthless before that point to minimize the loss.  
  
“Of course I know. That’s Shiranui Hansode-chan. I was also pretty much manipulated by that girl.”Ajimu answered calmly before Medaka could even ask the question after she barged into the tea ceremony club. Which only had two members at the moment as she had lent Matsuda out to Junko, and Celes had taken her money and ran with it. Hanten stayed in the corner staring at the wall as always.  
  
Out of breath the overly energetic Medaka muttered in between breaths, “Thank goodness. I was beginning to doubt myself.”  
  
“However what’s this all about?” Ajimu said, doing a good job of acting like she did not already know.  
  
“It’s just becoming like Hinokage-senpai. No one seems to remember anything about Shiranui.” Medaka sai settling onto the Tatami mats.  
  
Really, erasing other people’s memories, what a thoughtless thing for Kumagawa to do. I can’t imagine what kind of cruel person could do such a thing. Source: Matsuda’s Hypocrisy.  
  
“No rather than not remembering it’s as if they didn’t know anything from the beginning.” Medaka continued.  
  
A smile crept on Ajimu’s face as if she was speaking out of fondness. “The fact that Shiranui Hansode attended Sandbox and then Hoee’s Peak was made as if it never happened.” She really liked this part, leading the protagonist to the conclusion with a knowing smile. She would miss it.  
  
“Never happened…?...Eh? So… So so that eans eh?” Medaka’s mouth fell wide open. Oh, she was so cute.  
  
“Don’t be so surprised. You should’ve already had the same thing happend uring your middle school years, no? My face was torn off and I became like I never rexisted because nobody could recognize me.”  
  
“Then, this phenomenon is Kumagawa doing! He used is ‘All Fiction”’ and made it so our memories of Shiranui ‘never happened’. Did Junko finally convince him to her side? What kind of utlerior motive does he have for doing this!? I’ll fight him with every last breath if I have to.”  
  
“No, actually that’s unnecessary. I already understand what happened.”Ajimu stood up dusting off the Yukata she was wearing. She had decided she wanted to wear one today during club activities on a whim. Who knew when she would get the next chance to dress so nice. “As a matter of fact Shiranui-chan did manage to take on point off of me. So I simply want to return that favor. It also would have been troubling for me if any of my precious memories had been taken away, you never know when you’re precious memories are all you’re going to have left.”  
  
Foreshadowing was quite fun too. There was so many fun things you never noticed. She tilted her head to the side. “It’s odd though, are you sure you’re so concerned about someone you hate?”  
  
“Certainly I hate dSHiranui-san. I hated her frivolous and foolish attitude. But I never wished for her not to exist. But rather, I thought it was normal for her to exist, and normal to hate her. Moreover, recently I’ve finally got to like her! I would hate it if she disappeared now! What about my plans for a trio?”  
  
“Why are you going on about trios again, you romance happy knuckle head.” Ajimu said, her ever present smile faltering for a moment. “Medaka-hcan… I already knew about this before but, the reason Shiranui-chan left because her job was over. She was an employee of the Kurokami family. A ‘not equal’ simply for just being there. As established from Shiranui Hanten, they are a family supporting the Kurokami from the shadows. I guess you could say they were the dark side of the Kurokami Household. THe Shiranui family were originally a family of that kind. The ‘sea lights’ that are suspended in the dark of night are at the same time the ‘white embroidery’ that mend frayed spots. The kurokami, and the shiranui. Where  there is light, there is shadow. WIthin the shadows of the Kurokami was always Shiranui.”  
  
That girl seemed to know little about the family that she was destined to take over. She had separated herself from it and had been living on her own this entire time. She was cute. Ajimu had so many cute classmates.

Shiranui read as Kanji could mean sea lights, or white embroidery. People who existed at the edge. Shira white to the Kuro black, the Kurokamis black gods. Ajimu enjoyed word play, that was fun too. She wondered how much she would be allowed to explain. There was no reason to spoil future reveals. “So Shiranui was being paid to hang around me? I can’t just suddenly believe this because she was always meddling with every action of mine.”  
  
“Meddling is such a terribly insensitive way to put it. I guess it’s natural for the gifted to be ungrateful. Please try to remember that girl clearly, at times she was an enemy, and at times she was working behind the scenes, and she was outspoken yet nochalant, but she supported your high school lifestyle didn’t she? She always filled in the spots Kurokami Medaka couldn’t cover. It’s natural Medaka-chan would come to hate Shiranui-chan. After all the things she did were things you weren’t able to do.”  
  
“But if she did all that, then all the more- if that’s her job then her reason for leaving the school is all the more-”  
  
“The princess no longer needs me. That’s what she said. Of course the decision to end the assignment came from the head of the Kurokami Houshold, Kurokami Kajiki-kun. That day he discussed the matter with Kirigiri-kun and decided it. Medaka-chan the reason why he sent a ninja like that to follow you around with your approval was because it was a form of his parental love to care for you as you entered Sandbox Academy. The academy that devised the flask plan. I don’t know whose fault that would be.”  She chuckled at her own joke. “The flask plan now, is pretty much nullified and you understood the hearts of people so…well, not my heart because I’m not a people.”  
  
“My father… But there’s no way just because I understood the herats of people. Because I’ve begun to like her… To no longer be able to see Shiranui anymore… IT’s too much! Just when I finally, though we could become friends.” Her fingers balled up together but her hand trembled too much not with held back strength or anger but rather weakness. She grabbed her short purple hair and knotted her bangs between her fingers, pulling in frustration.  
  
At this exact same Zenkichi walked in again a bit unsteady on his feet. His conersation with Izuru and Komaeda continuing from the outside. “Since when have you started wearing glasses anyway? Are you doing it to look cool? I thought that was my thing.”  
  
“It’s… just eye strain from spending so much time staring at a monitor these days.” Komaeda said with an odd pause. Then everything about the way he spoke happened to be odd so Zenkichi did not think much of it.  
  
“I can’t believe you have a shelf that consists entirely of spare glasses.” Izuru muttered standing between them.  
  
“They get broken a lot okay. I need extras. I’m a rowdy boy.”  
  
As he said that though suddenly Medaka’s head turned around. Before Zenkichi could even catch up to the situation, Medaka threw her arms around his neck once more. He was thrown off balance for a moment and his glasses fell off his face shattering on the floor once more. Zenkichi barely had the strength to stand with that girl hanging off of him, but he forced his legs to lock.  
  
She closed her eyes once more preparing herself, and then Ajimu opened them once more. It was odd how little moments like that quickly slipped away. “Medakaa-chan… and Hitoyoshi-kun also. Komaeda-kun, and Hinata-kun you also seem to be too connected, their sentiment too strong,  to have forgotten from Kumagawa-kun’s memory wipes. From here on, I plan to go to meet Shiranui-chan. How about we all go together?”  
  
“Can we really afford to leave the school right now just to go after one classmate?” Izuru asked.  
  
Medaka glared back at him. “Oh, are you not willing to go as far if it’s not class 77-B whose in danger?”  
  
Izuru had nothing to say in response. Even if they were about as equally strong she was far more willful than he would ever be in his life.  
  
“Remember what I said? That I still have to return a favor? I don’t like leaving debts behind. I was going to go alone, but then Medaka-chan yelled at me last time the big meanie. I have an idea where she went off to, so why don’t you guys say words of farewell. It’s bad to disappear without saying goodbye isn’t it?”  
  
“Of course I’ll go, but there won’t be any farewells. We are going to meet her.” Medaka disengaged herself from Zenkichi again changing moods as she wiped her face off with her forearm. “If you tell me it’s over then I… Then I’ll become friends with her from square one!!”

Even at the end there was no reason for it to be the end. Simply pick up another book. Everybody around her was saying that, she should have listened. Even her friends from middle school.  
  
Kamukura noted how quickly she seemed to be changing moods but said nothing at all.  
  
“Umm, it’s probably best I don’t go. If you have the culmination of the flask plan, the Kamukura project, and the Kurokami family with you plus Ajimu then I’m unnecessary.”  
  
Before Kamukura could speak up to encourage him it was Ajimu who spoke first. “Well, there are said to be several puzzles on the way to the Shiranui village. You might pick up something that the super geniuses miss.”  
  
“Oh, I do like puzzles…” Komaeda muttered under his breath as he adjusted his glasses. It was more like he wanted something to fiddle with in between his fingers to work out these nerves. He was not just thinking of whether he would be useful, but whether it would be okay for him to travel, whether he would be a risk. _Medaka, Kamukura and Ajimu are here it should be fine. It should be fine. It should be fine._ It felt like a lie he was telling himself over and over again to make it real.

 

😈

 

  
NIsenoshima yawned as she rolled around in her sleeping bag. A sleeping bag was completely unnecessary on Tatami but she was going for the NEET Aesthetic. She had worked hard studying for the past few hours after all.  
  
She was rolling around at the feet of Iihiko who simply stared at her, even though his eyes were not showing behind his mask. The moment she made a demand of him he was ready to attend to her needs. He was fine retrieving anything in the world for her, but all she had asked for the last half hour was cup after cup of ramen noodles. She sat up once more and inhaled the noodles looking at the screen in front of her.  
  
“Gosh I sure do burn so many calories being a genius? Whose fault is it that I’m this super smart again? Oh wait, it’s mine. Puhuhuhu.” She laughed at her own joke. “Hey, hey, I’m literally rolling on the floor laughing! Isn’t that amazing!”  
  
Iihiko merely continued to stand silently at her attention.  
  
She sat up once more and looked to the girl next to her. “My name is Enoshima Junko. I go by “Super High School Level Fashion Girl”. Sometimes I’m a charismatic model with an adoring audience. Sometimes I’m a charismatic… I can’t tell you yet! Forgive me!” She anounced herself and behind her, Ihiko turned on a flash light to illuminate her back, as if she were an actor in the spotlight on stage.  
  
“Oyoyoyoyo, what are you doing?” She looked at the girl next to her with a curious face.  
  
Since returning home to the Shiranui village, Hansode had worn nothing but a serious expression. Even the video she was watching in front of her. It was hard to keep track of, on a plasma screen video cam footage from Jabberwock island was being displayed. However rather than one, it was screen divided fifty two times showing fifty two different feeds of footage at the same time, all sped up. However, the girl sitting next to her seemed to be able to watch all of it at once, Shiranui caught a glimpse and her eyes were looking in two different directions at the same time.  
  
“Why are you going all like new phone who dis on me in person? Ah! Don’t tell me it’s a secret! You’re oging into your silent-chan mode again!” She puffed out her cheeks like she was a little kid and made a frustrated expression. From one moment to the next, her expression changed in a heart beat like swapping masks. “You know, the whole silent-chan character isn’t really in style today, huh? Didn’t you get tired of stoics always following Medaka-chan around. Since human beings have such excellent conversational skills, you shouldn’t let it go to waste.”  
  
“...” Shiranui kept looking forward.  
  
“Come on, even after I invited you to a sleep-over party to binge your favorite show with me like besties.”  
  
“Um… Enoshima-san.”  
  
“Drop the san! I hate to be referred to with such formalities!”

“But we only met a few minutes ago, I really shouldn’t be rude.” Shiranui said, in a polite way that was the opposite of her normal character.  
  
“We’re not complete strangers or anything. Ahaha, that’s wrong! I mean, you and I are penpaaaaals!”  
  
“...Penpals?”  
  
“You know, everything in this village it’s all for you! I wrote it down in extra hot pink ink so you’d be able to see it, it’s a message I was extra extra looking forward for you to read!” Suddenly her voice dropped and her face was completely expressionless. In a terribly monotone voice not far off from Shiranui’s own, far too light, as if she was talking about something like a dropped coin. “The dead body. The body that was dead. There was a post death body. A lot of them. That’s what I was hinting at with my brilliant wordplay.”  
  
“I see.” Shiranui was not sure what kind of reaction this girl wanted her to show, so she kept her face neutral.  
  
“Honestly, are you going on with that again? Shouldn’t you get with the times already and bring out your inner energetic character? Why are you showing me such a boring face. Oh, this might change your mind, the princess came with four others. They are at the entrance of our village.”  
  
Iihiko returned with a tray of tea laying it in front of Shiranui. The only emotion she showed was a slight twitching of her eyes. “...I see, exactly as expected you can’t count on Kumagawa-senpai’s all fiction, or Kumagawa-senpai in general to do anything competent.”  
  
“Hmm, let’s see my future husband Kamukura-senpai is among them, then there’s fan favorite white haired pretty boy Komaeda, and that girl who drinks too much milk Medaka-chan. Oh, that loser Hitoyoshi Zenkichi is there as well. Remember that guy, he self importantly thought he was the one supporting Kurokami Medaka, but the one supporting the monster woman was you all along. How shameless of him.”  
  
At that moment she picked up the remote and stopped the video. Right on video camera footage of Hitoyoshi Zenkichi hanging himself within Jabberwock Island.

WIthout thinking suddenly Shiranui’s arm moved on its own and splashed water in Nisenoshima’s makeup covered face. Her small mouth fell open at her own actions. “...Sorry, althought I was only best friends with Hitoyoshi as a job… I need to cool my head for awhile. I’m really sorry. I’m sorry. I really appreciate all your consideration, initing me back to the village and all.”  
  
She looked more confused at her own actions then she did afraid.  
  
A fake smile spread across the fake Junko’s face. “Don’t worry, this is all for you Shiranui. I’m not controlling you or anything, you can decide what you want to do next I’ll only watch I’ll promise!  I want to see the face you make when you see them. Ah, just to clarify I know we go on and on about that evangelion crap about how you can only see your true face with others and friendship nonsense but I think differently. I think the true beautiful you can only be born from betrayal, when you act of your own free will.” Her twisted logic. A freeing logic that smashed all the changes around her. She looked away from the screen with disinterest crawling out of her sleeping bag. Instead of hitting pause of the remote however, she threw the remote through the tv screen shattering it on a whim. “Eh, it’s just a rerun. I’ve binged this so many times I’ve lost track. Come on, let’s go hide and get ready for our epic entrance!”

As she said that she practically jumped into Iihiko’s arms. He had to drop the tea he was trying to drink while keeping his mask on in order to catch her. He nodded silently to Shiranui and carried her away like a princess.  
  
Shiranui was left alone in the room, but all she could think of to do was run her hands along her face, feeling the contours and edges of it. She wanted to see with her fingers what she could not see with her hands, to memorize the shape of her face, as if that would help her understand it any better. This was her face. This was hers. The face belonging to her. A lie she wanted to repeat again and again until it became true, but Shiranui knew better than anyone else that that was not the case. That lies could not simply become real by passively wishing for it.  


😈

 

“We’re going to meet Shiranui-san who left the school, that’s fine and all Anshin’in-san but… couldn't you make us travel in an instant with one of your ten trillion skills? So we shouldn’t have to drive so slowly up this mountain road in a jeep?”  
  
Komaeda suggested. He was not impatient or anything, he just did not like to drive under such dangerous traveling conditions.  
  
“Wahahaaha, Komaeda-kun. So I see you’re one of those types. The type to say you had a dokodemo door, then you wouldn’t need a take-copter.” It was too bad Junko was not around to hear her Doraemon jokes, she should have made more to annoy the girl while she was still around. “Isn’t the journey on the road the fun part of traveling? It’s not all about using skills for anything and everything. Besides, it’s nice to take the long road sometimes.”  
  
That girl seemed wistful in a way that nobody would notice. “We’re just here to accompany you on your trip. I don’t mind being tangled up in your games.” WIth Junko and Ajimu, Medaka had come to expect that. “But Anshin’in-san, I hope you’re not forgetting our obective.’  
  
“Of course I’m going there to get rid of a debt and Medaka-chan you are heading there to become friends with Shinraui-chan. I’m sure as a part of this journey there will be many puzzles and trials for us to overcome along the way in order for us to become closer as a five person group.” Ajimu said, when suddenly the four of them drove over a severe bump in the road. Just then, Ajimu Najimi pulled the jeep over to see what they had hit.  
  
Nagito Komaeda jumped out of his seat practically, worried that they would drive off a cliff, or the car would explode. However nothing had happened, they had just hit a particularly big bump in the road. He walked over to inspect it and saw something was buried in the dirt. Before he could investigate, Ajimu spoke up again.  
  
“It seems like we’re here already. Huh, I heard there were puzzles on the way there. I guess we just skipped to the ending. Drat. I was hoping this would take longer.”  
  
Behind her, Hitoyoshi sighed exasperated. “Hey, don’t wish for  things to be more complicated than they need to be. The sooner we can reunite with Shiranui the better.”  
  
“Awe, but I like puzzles. I was hoping to get the chance to be useful, and show up all the arrogant talented people like I did in the killing game. Especially HInata-kun.” In the bakground, Komaeda pouted like a child full on puffing his cheeks out. It was strange how quickly the boy’s mood could change.  
  
Silently, Izuru reached to try to pat him on the shoulder. Before he could make contact Komaeda already started walking ahead.  
  
“Well, since we’re here already welcome to the Shiranui Village. A remote place beyond human knowledge.” As she walked forward at the head of the group. Ajimu Najimi played the role of tour guide. She wanted to keep playing around as long as she could. “See it looks like nothing more than just a regular village, it’s like a ninja village. What they’re protecting… what they’re protecting… they’ve always worked in the shadows of the Kurokami House… but I suppose that’s not true what they’re really protecting is the world.”

Ajimu Najimi did not know everything, or even claim to know like those two annoying girls Izuko and Junko, but the total accumulated but she generally tended to know more than most. If people had the wrong expectations she knew what the right ones were. But she wouldn’t spoil it, she absolutely wouldn’t.

Anybody can turn to the last page of a story to see who lives and who dies. However, anybody that would actually do that isn’t a truly invested reader. Ajimu Najimi had made a mistake critical for her existence. She had become invested in this story she was taking part of. This is the same thing. She may have a lot of power, but she’s fair to every twist in the plot. And in terms of this story, that investment is deadly.  
  
In this case it would have been better for Ajimu Najimi to be unfair. If she cheated, if she godmodded, if she acted out to her full mary sue potential I’m sure everyone around her would have forgiven her.  
  
The puzzles that she was hoping would buy a little more time had already been cleared by someone else. In fact, the entire village was almost empty, and quiet. Zenkichi the most normal of the group scratched at his spiky hair. “Is anybody else getting weird vibes from this place? Are they trying to go for that creepy aesthetic on purpose?”

When they finally reached a door, it opened on its own causing both Komaeda and Zenkichi who were already on edge to jump. Shiranui, small and cute as ever on the other side, dressed in a freshly sewn dress that seemed crafted specifically for her to look cute in greeted them in a normal fashion. “Hey.” She pointed forward. “Hey, uhmmm…. Who are you guys again? Maybe it’s just my intuition but have we met before? I don’t recognize the white haired pretty boy and tall dark and silent, uhmm… Did you guys cross over from something else erhaps? Ahhh… Could it be from my previous job then you guys must be. Yes, yes. Kurokami Medaka and Hitoyshi Zenkichi.” She winked smiling her usual carefree smile. “So-rry! I have a habit of forgetting about things I don’t give a crap about.”  
  
“Ding! Ding! Ding! Yes, I am Kurokami Medaka! Thank you for remembering me! My chest is filled with feelings of grat-tits-tude!” Kruokami said, crossing her arms to accentuate her chest.  
  
Zenkichi’s jaw dropped behind her. “Me… Medaka-chan made… a dirty joke!? I’ve failed to protect her innocence!”  
  
“This is Enoshima’s fault somehow.” An equally stunned Hinata muttered.  
  
“Now that you’ve remembered Shiranui! After such a long absence, let us renew our friendship! By the way, don’t the people in this house ever think to serve tea to their guests!?” Medaka had no idea what to say. Not so different from Ensohima Junko she was used to people giving her what she wanted right away. People usually admired her naturally. There was never somebody she had desired to become friends with until recently. She just assumed they were already friends. First the Enoshima Junko that she hated, and now the Shiranui that she hated, she wanted to reconcile in some way. She had no idea how, so she just shouted whatever came to mind.  
  
An awkward girl. She had finally become an awkward human being.  
  
“I see you’ve finally changed princess. That’s why… I’m not needed. I’ll say this first, you better not say anything cheesy! Like, please return, or let’s go back to our school together. Well, you should be the one who’s enjoying this the most princesss. That thing you call your “youthful days’ don’t waste them chasing after me. It’s rumored to be a once in a lifetime precious thing. You’ll grow up sooner or later.”  
  
It was not Medaka who grew agitated, but rather Zenkichi grinding his canine like teeth. Just like Medaka though he just shouted whatever came to mind first without thinking. “Job? Job? Is that what you’re saying? That everything until now was just a part of your job? Shiranui! What about the things you did to support the student council from behind the scenes, or the time you were secretly during our side during the battle, or the time when you rooted for me in the end of the year election, or on jabberwock together!?”

“I am saying job, job, job! Everything was indeed part of a job, Hitoyoshi! I”m just a ninja that was hired to follow Medaka-chan around there’s no need to think of it as more than that. When I supposrted you, when I was secretly on your side, whe I rooted for you, when I suffered, eeeeverything was just a job! I was simply completing everything I was told to do.”

“I’m disappointed. I always thought… you were more free than that, Shiranui.”  
  
“Free? Free is far form a word that definds me. Although, at the same time it’s s uper troublesome word for me” SHe leaned against the table that had been set up for them to met at. “Well, I am far thankful for you though. Because of you my job as a ninja went smooth.”  
  
“Because of me…? Wait are you really a ninja or are you just making tha tup.”  
  
“They say, he who wants to hit the general must first hit the horse. I snuck into the academy on my own, but the princess had a strong defense. So, I arranged a meet cute for us on purpose. Because you connected me to the princess… well that’s not anything special.” She waved her hand flippantly. “It was always like that. The reason why people bothered to make contact with you was because they wanted to fight against Kurokami. The reason why Kumagawa-senpai collided with you so much was because he was irritated with you always being next to the princess. The reason why Anshin’in-san made you a pawn for her own plan was because she thought that was the best strategy against the princess. In the end, you were simply a bridge between the princess and others, so even if I never thought of you as a friend nobody else did either.”  
  
Zenkichi had no response, except for the loud grinding of his teeth. Medaka put a hand in front of him and spoke first.”There’s something I don’t understand why erase any memory of yourself? You had to know we would come after you, we’re your comrades you made at that school after all.”

“I’m not really her friend I just kind of got dragged along…” Komaeda muttered, feeling out of place again. He wished he had a puzzle to solve, or something to contribute. Feeling out of place in this scene he stood up and started to wander away, ignoring Hinata asking him if he’s some kind of cat because he can’t sit still without roaming around. He walked past a divider in the room looking behind it. This village was a place he had never been before and yet he could not shake a familiar feeling. A feeling he had walked side by side with all of his life.  
  
“Ah… hi. Ahyahyahyahya! Uhmmm, tha’ts how I usually laugh right? Don’t make me laugh now! So hilarious! You really think I have any true emotions. Besides why are you guys all talking about your precious school so much? Don’t most people hate shcool? It’s just a place people reluctantly attend because they have to, just like they reluctantly grow up because they have to. A school is a school because you haev to attend!” She wiped at her eye, the act of laughing was becoming exhausted to her. “Yes, that’s right. I hated Hope’s Peak. I never felt excited wlaking the path to school. My heart never throbbed in excitement over the start of the day whenever I walked through the school gate. I was never happy even though I was invited to play in class. The school lunch was digusting, especially since I had to eat so much. it wasn’t fun at all, being surrounded by eccentric personalities. I was never excited that every day wasn’t like the last. I was never healed by the academy’s flower filled scenery. I didn’t think poetically about falling cherry blossoms at all. I never felt challenged or satisfied thinking of tricks or plans to break down desperate situations. I never felt cheerful attending the cademy’ sports or cultural festival after forlicking so much. WHen I was with everyone. I never once forgot that I was only here to do a job. Everything from the warmth of people, a hard hurdle, everything and everyone, I hated, hated, hated, it. I hated every bit of it! I hated my school life!”  
  
She said it perfectly. She performed the part perfectly. So really why would they not leave her alone. She did not break down crying unexpectedly, she did not realize at the last moment that she truly loved them all along. She bore all the hatred in her heart like a fine weapon.  
  
Yet still that idiot Zenkichi was smiling at her. “I don’t care what you think of me. I get that I’m nothing without Medaka-chan, I’m seriously on the verge of crying but that’s fine. But… you don’t have to disappear suddenly like this. Can’t we at least say goodbye?”

Just then before Shiranui could say anything else, Komaeda knocked over one of the screen doors with his discovery falling back. No matter how many times he saw it, he hated the filthy look of it. He knew exactly what the familiar feeling was that had been bothering him since the moment they entered this village. It was a companion that had been walking next to him his entire life. The unforgettable feeling of death. The shinigami his lifelong friend. The only guardian angel trash like him deserved to have. He had stumbled upon a corpse searching around the room, it was twisted, mangled, and more importanly weeks old and smelled like it was rotting.  
  
“What’s going on here? Why is there dead bodies lying on the floor in this village? Why is this place so silent? Why is nobody but you here Shiranui?”  
  
“Good, just like that Shiranui. Let’s entertain the guess and try not to be rude.” From above, a voice spoke up belonging to none of the guests present at the table. Medaka, Ajimu and Kamukura looked around surprised.Then, Iihiko dropped down carrying the girl the voice belonged to princess style. “Don’t you think you’ve been delaying the inevtaible enough? It’s puniiiiishment tiiiiiiime!”  
  
The moment she was put down, she walked over and kicked Shiranui in the head. “Come on, after all I did for you the lame show you put on for me was just the old ‘pretend to hate them to drive them away because i really wuv them’ routine! You could have done better than that! You’re supposed to be this village’s ace! Aren’t you top star?”  
  
Shiranui gave no response back.  
  
“Junko…? No, you’re suposed to be honeymooning with Kumagawa-kun right now, or whatever teen dating is like.” Medaka said, thoroughly confused. She stepped in front of Zenkichi protectively, and Kamukura in front of Komaeda.  
  
Before anybody else could react, Ajimu stood up. “Hey. Medaka-chan, HItoyoshi-kun, Koameda-kun, Hinata-kun. I can hold him off for fifteen seconds. Run.”  
  
However before any of them could listen to her, Zenkichi charged ahead as always. Perhaps that beating he had taken to the head made him more reckless than usual. He aimed a roundhouse kick right at the fake Junko. “You bastard! Do you need sense kicked into you again! After I rescued your beloved sister and eerything you kick my beloved friend Shiranui!”

However before the blow could even land, Iihiko the half masked man, wearing a suit and his red hair pulled back moved to intercept it. With one hand he easily caught the blow receiving none of its damage at all. “That itches. I see. Mosquitoes have evolved so much. But, no matter how big they are it’s still common to squash them.” Catching his foot in the air he slammed Zenkichi into the ground with everything he had breaking the tatami. Zenkichi quickly became a part of a Zenkichi sized hole in the ground. The difference between their strength was so massive it was almost cartoonish.  
  
“Why… why is Junko here? Who is that guy? Zenkichi had no chance against him and…” Medaka looked at the broken apart rooms. Now that she was looking closely, she could see dried blood on the floor and the overwhelming smell of death heavy in the air.  
  
Kamukura’s eyes widened as he quickly analyzed the situation. “I see so that’s how it is. How boring. We walked right into a box of death.”  
  
“I think that’s just called  a casket, mr. overly literal guy.” The fake Junko said, leaning against Iihiko.  
  
“I already put up with one Enoshima I’m not dealing with a second. A third. God this splintering is becoming a problem.” He quickly pieced together the fragments in his memory. “You were… That time Junko was hospitalized after the field trip you ran around dressed as her. And you’re the intruder that tried to kill Komaeda.”  
  
“Yep, yep, we’ll have a flashback arc to explain it all later I’m sure. I’ll be sure to write it. So, hurry up and get to the death already! Our rating sare going to plummet if we keep wasting screen time on all this feel good power of friendship nonsense.” Junko said, dawing a line across her throat with her red nail.  
  
“Just hurry up and run already, Medaka-chan. It can’t be helped, I’ll try to buy more time.” Ajimu kept her face away, because she did not want to Kurokami or anybody else to see the expression she was making at that moment.  
  
“That’s not it! Stop dodging the question like you normally do! If you know answer the question!”

“I took you down here so I could say goodbye! You demanded it of me! That man is Iihiko, the first person I ever lost against, but that was 5,000 years ago so I have no idea how he’s still alive. This is my one and only request, so please run! Kamukura-senpai might not, but Hitoyoshi-kun, and Komaeda-kun will die for sure if you don’t get them out of here!”  
  
“Fine, I’ll spoil you.” At that moment, she split into five though that was only a trick of the eye. She grabbed onto Komaeda who was still stunned from seeing the dead bodies, grabbed Hinata by his tie, lifted Zenkcihi from the floor, and grabbed onto Shiranui, pulling all of them onto her broad back she started to race away dragging them with her.  
  
“You even bothered to save Shiranui-san who said she ahted you. That’s one thing about you that doesn’t change, huh, Medaka-chan. What a lonely girl. I suppose I’ll miss that too.” After the troubled and shaking expression she had made, and a sweat slicked face that she did not want to show, a smile slowly spread on her lips. “Man, I reaaaaaaaally hate this. Now the only ones who are going to see me die are Iihiko, and the most unlikable version of Junko-chan.”  
  
“Ajimu-san. I’m sure my predecessor as Iihiko would have asked, before I was turned into him and replaced him. I’ll be sure to give the message to my future replacement. So I wonder, have you found the impossibility you were looking for?”  
  
That man reached into the holsters at his side, and drew up a twin pair of guns. They looked much older, and made of older metals than normal pistols of that size.  
  
“...” Ajimu remembered a girl covered in blood and fury screaming in her face. _Your next impossibility will be suicide. I will forever get in your way, so prepare yourself._ Medaka really had kept such a foolish promise. Keeping a hopelessly long lived person like her alive. Since then she had gotten seven more years on that island to fool around and tease Kumagawa. She had gotten to see all the kinds of faces Junko made. In the end she could not make that girl give up on despair no matter how many times she ripped her claws out, but that too was interesting. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the an with no face in front of her. That was right before this she was simply living as a faceless existence.  
  
Her only goal in live was to keep existing forever. She had no idea what at all what to do with all that time. She had no understanding of why humans were so colorful and she was not. She did not even know what she was, just what she was not. Not human, lackingin comparison to them in every way.  
  
She was no better than Junko. Childish and cruel, living only to satiate her own desires, turning her nose up at the whole world and declaring her boredom for it without even trying to live as a human once. That’s right had she even lived before this point? Choked up with fear, panicking, hating the feeling of being alone in these moments surrounded by people she hated. What right did she have to feel such things a human would?  
  
She had all the time in the world and she waste it before this point. She should have enjoyed her school life a little more. She should have apologized properly to Kumagawa. She should have been the one to tutor him for final exams instead of Junko and watched him graudate. She should have done something to get them out of Jabberwock earlier and broken her own silly little rules. She should have chatted seriously with Junko as an older sister about the prospects of dating her younger brother, poured tea for both of them and seriously lectured her. She should have asked Mukuro how she could always manage to forgive Junko over and over again and asked what it was she could do to make up what she had done to Kumagawa. She should have had a beach episode, and another hot springs episode, and a fireworks festival episode, and she should have been reading that book a little more closely. Now, because she had failed to pay attention it had ended before she even realized.  
  
“Ajimu Najimi! Ow about you chase after those guys capture them, and surrender them to me. My princess doesn’t want to kill them. They’re important actors for the school play she’s putting on. If you do so, then I will spare your life.”

In that moment Ajimu Najimi thought of a middle school classroom that was entirely empty now. She realized how much she wanted to go back there. WIth the first human she had ever become friends with. Kumagawa Misogi. That room was enough for her. Her happiness dwelled entirely in that room. She could live there forever.  
  
But she was going to die.

A being like herself, a non-human, had managed to make precious memories.  
  
“That’s a request I can’t accept.”  
  
To have all the time in the world and suddenly to have it compressed into fifteen seconds, I cannot image it.  
  
Fifteen.  
  
Iihiko did not break out any special ability. He merely leveled the guns at her and fired off several shots. She tried to use several skills to dodge, but not a single one reached him. It was like a fight between two normal humans, with no x men powers involved whatsoever.

Fourteen.  
  
Ajimu Najimi looked down and saw that her skills were useless. She looked at her own stomach and saw several holes in it. Suddenly she lost the use of her legs and toppled over backwards.  
  
Thirteen.  
  
Without skills she was just like a normal girl. Really, of all times to be treated like a normal girl thirteen seconds away from her own death. Ihiiko stood over her his mouth pulled tight, and his face expressionless due to the mask covering it.  
  
“Now then, what will your last words be?”  
  
Twelve.  
  
She opened her mouth and only coughed blood.  
  
Eleven.  
  
The immortal girl tried to move around in a pool of her own blood but only uselsesly splashed around.  
  
Ten.  
  
“I took pity on you and didn’t aim for an instant kill. It’s important to get your words out, now that you’re just going to become another story.”

Nine.  
  
Ajimu was no longer existing in the current moment. She looked to the side and placed her hand against the tatami mats feeling it. She was no longer dying on the floor instead she was laying on the tatami mats five years ago. Kumagawa like a stray puppy had followed her home. She had decided if he ever became annoying or disappointed her expectations she would just get rid of him.  
  
Eight.  
  
Every single night the first month they lived together she had to sleep next to him. He screamed horrible things in his sleep, and shook like he was dying of sickness. Then the next morning he would greet her with a smile. Sleeping was actually a completely unnecessary thin for her. She just did it because it was boring to stare at the stars all night. She had never expected though there was someone who would be so happy to see her in the morning.  
  
Seven.

Kumagawa looked at the stars with her one night. He pointed out the unlucky star that he had been born under. Every time he looked at the sky he asked if that was where she was from, if she was going to return there one day. When he did he would tremble with fear and cling onto her. It was unsightly but she did not mind it for some reason. There was somebody in this world who would miss her if she was gone. There was someone who did not want her to leave.  
  
Six.  
  
While they were looking at those stars Kumagawa asked her about wishes. She did not think that boy was capable of even having dreams in the first place. Yet, ever since meeting her he started to speak of them again. She wondered why, because she was a person incapable of change. There was no way an encounter with her could bring about a change in another person.  
  
Five.  
  
That boy started insisting she share ice cream with him. He pushed her over and started to play games of tag with him. Even though he always lost he looked like he was having so much fun. She never understood it. One day he appeared and held up a school uniform and told her to go to school with him as a student.  
  
Four.  
  
That’s what normal families do. He said. A lie. Two things they would never be. Normal and a family. Yet it was so shamelessly told a lie she wanted to believe it.  
  
Three.  
  
A wish can be something that can never come true the moment you tell someone else about it. Someone had told Kumagawa that once. When you go to the first visit of a year, they say your wish won’t come true if you say it out loud. Because you can’t trust words. The moment you put it into words and tell someone, that starts to pass aside your feelings. Words are nothing but lies, and nothing but cheats. No matter the truth, the moment it is told, it becomes dramatized. Kumagawa told her those words, and started to cry. If you want to wish for it that wish can never be spoken out loud. Kumagawa told her this while they were watching the stars and he was crying. He was always filled with such colorful emotion, watercolors leaked down his face, why was he crying?  
  
Two.  
  
He told her this. “I’m scared now, because I told you how happy being around you makes me I’m afraid my wish won’t come true. I just want things to stay like this. I shouldn’t have wished for it… now it’ll never…” Kumagawa cried and shook and she could only hold him having no idea what kind of emotions were running through him like a river, blurring all the lines, making the colors run.  
  
One.  
  
Now she thought she understood though. A wish that could never be spoken out loud. She had one of those now, too.    
  
Zero.

“Tell Kumagawa this…”  
  
Ajimu Najimi died.  
Drowning in a pool of her own blood. She died just like a human would. If only she had lived like one.   
Keeping her last word to Kurokami Medaka that she would say goodbye to Kumagawa before parting with him at least.  
She died alone, just as she had lived.  
That non-human became nothing more than a story.  
Always assuming that she had to have an end.  
But everyone around her wished her to simply keep going on forever. Especially the second human she had found Kumagawa. They would be happy if her story never ended.   
That was her tragedy. 


	24. Immortal Man

Ikusaba Mukuro is strong. She’s definitely strong. If the strongest in her school is Kurokami Medaka, and a close second is Kamukura Izuru then without any human experimentation or dedicated pedigree of breeding to enhance her Mukuro would claim the title of third strongest for her hard work to become a weapon alone.  
  
She was not born into a life of killing like Pekoyama who was abandoned on the doorstep of the yakuza. She chose to become this way, she chose to run away to Fenrir, and most of all knowing exactly the kind of terrible person her sister was she still chose to accept her sister.

However, in spite of that strength Ikusaba has never used that strength for herself. She’s entirely lacking in the confidence that Enoshima has to simply do as she likes. While she can kill without hesitation it has always been at the order of others. Following orders, while she might have the fangs of a wolf she’s thoroughly domesticated. When asked to do anything other than kill for the most part she’s entirely flummoxed, an empty person, when asked to be a human being she becomes incredibly weak and cannot make her own decisions.

Simply put she has no self confidence at all. A classical wallflower personality, equipped to kill. If she were a little more self confidence, she could have stood up to her sister all on her own a long time ago. No, if she were this easily willing to kill others, and able to justify that killing to herself she could have turned into something worse than Enoshima.  
  
It was because she chose to tie herself to others that made her so easy to control. The red strings that connected her bonds to her precious people, had been turned into nothing more than strings to puppeteer her with by her bored bored sister’s dextrous and far too nimble hands. You know what they say about bored hands and the devil’s playthings.  
  
However, when she was severed from her sister for three years she encountered in Fenrir another woman who reminded her too much of herself. She was strong like Mukuro, and just like Mukuro she was violent and fought without hesitation at all. She solved everything through violence, violence was her only communication. The sole difference lied in their attachment.  
  
That woman was self confident as an adult ought to be, so she listened to no one. She fought only for her own values and refused to accept the values of others. That was Kagenui Yozuru, the woman who could not be controlled by anyone or anything. Even someone who knew everything like Izuko had trouble with her, despite being her senpai of one year older.  
  
The kind of person who did nothing but cause trouble for her senpai in the past, that was who the killer school girl Ikusaba was faced with now, and who she had faced in the past.

A bad example of who to grow up into perhaps, but there was one catch. Kagenui actually had no ill will towards Ikusaba at all. In the past the only person who had ever left an impression at Fenrir was Kagenui, who had joined at the exact same time for the exact same reason, to pursue strength.  
  
One time even when Mukuro’s hair had started to grow too long after three years, it was Kagenui who pulled her aside and cut it for her. As the scissors snipped away at her thin black hair Mukuro heard for the first time in her life compliments for how unique her looks were. _You should keep it short. That way no matter what you will look recognizably different from your sister. No matter what you’ll always be seen as a separate person._ She whispered into her ear.

Kagenui had always craved something like a little sister figure to spoil and take care of. However, Mukuro was not able to become that. She already had a sister. However, Kagenui noticed the relationship between the two sisters was a parasitic existence. Ikusaba every time she subjected herself to pain muttered that it was for Junko’s sake. Kagenui stole and read away letters filled with insult after insult. Slowly, she began to think that Ikusaba had been tricked or fooled some way, into loving this person. That Junko was a blood sucking existence that was going to drain Ikusaba of all she was worth then leave her behind as nothing more than a husk, without even a single drop of gratitude falling from her fangs for everything Mukuro had given to her.  
  
Slowly after that as if it was the natural assumption to make Kagenui started to think. _If only Enoshima was dead, then Ikusaba would be free._ “You’re still a person even without your sister, you can live without her.” Was the message she wanted to communicate but Kagenui only understood the language of violence. Which had led her to make that threat. Any opportunity she could, any slip in Ikusaba’s performance was a good enough excuse to hunt down and kill that no good sister of hers. She had judged no real sister could ever treat family like that.

Kagenui was that kind of person. She could only ever fight for her own personal reasons, her own personal justice, nor could she ever accept the justice or values of others. She was the exact opposite of Ikusaba who could only fight for Junko’s despair, or Makoto’s hope. Every reason, every inciting incident, was just a pretext to fight for what she thought was right. Even now hearing the news from Izuko that there was a second Enoshima Junko running around all she had thought gleefully was _ah, finally an excuse to go kill that brat that bullied my underclassmen in Fenrir two years ago.  
_  
All she needed to do was beat the bad guy, destroy the antagonist, and the story would end. Ikusaba would be free from her burdens and complete her arc. That woman was gleefully confident in her simplistic thinking.

Ikusaba had been thinking of in the cold harsh environment of Fenrir, there was one person who took special attention to her, who always checked if she was alright, who cut her hair when she needed it and did all the things a sister ought to do without asking for anything in return, and that kindness was what terrified her. Because people who thought they were good, kind people could justify almost anything.

Self justification, that was justice.

That was enough character introduction though, Mukuro in the present moment did not have the time nor the voice to explain all of this to her two siblings. Ikusaba thought because of her past connection Yozuru would attack her first, out of disappointment for a solider who had given up on killing, of annoyance for a weak girl who let herself take too many hits - but she was wrong.  
  
Very, very, wrong.  
She lifted her leg and slammed it hard again to the boy’s head she was standing on. That was not just an eccentric introduction or a running gag about Kumagawa’s bad luck and lack of respsect from everyone around him. It was an opening move in a battle. She stomped down and easily tore through his far too hard skull like styrofoam, and then kept going, and going, until Kumagawa’s head had been stomped into the ground and leaked its contents onto the pavement.  
Until he was nothing more than a headless boy.  
The same boy who had comforted her time and time again.  
  
“Misogi-chan I...I...I... I’m… sorry…” Mukuro gave a meek and thoughtless reply  because her thoughts had severed herself from her body and she moved on instinct alone. She flew forwards towards Kagenui, who wasn’t paying any attention at all. She was incapable of worrying about even what would happen to Junko next now. Was Junko observing this scene too? Did she see red? Hot pink? Did she feel despair at the sudden and callous loss of Kumagawa? Did she feel no despair at all because his end had nothing to do with her?  
  
All she could see was red. The whole world was red. Searing, crimson rage.  
What had she done?  
To Kumagawa Misogi. To Misogi-chan. To her little brother who did nothing but smile at her, more foolish and more forgiving than anybody in the world.  
  
“Cool your head, wolf girl. Who knew a cold as Cocytus girl like you could get so hot blooded. Don’t young these days know, fighting for revenge is no good, you’ll get burned as you burn others.” Kagenui spoke like she knew better, because she thought she did.  
  
She remembered just up until the point where she had drawn garrote wire from her wrist and was about to entangle it around Kagenui’s neck, and then her memory cut off. When she regained control over herself she was bent over at such an odd angle she was practically in the position of downward facing dog and Kagenui was still standing on her back.

“At this time Oshino-kun would probably say something like, ‘You’re looking lively. Did something good happen?’...”

“Yeah, still don't’ know who that is. Why do people keep expecting us to know who he is?” Ikusaba asked, her head down in the dust of the broken up road, gritting her teeth. “Shut up… You bastards… You killed…My brother Misogi-chan, I’ll make you pay.”  
  
“Oh, you considered that thing your brother. I just thought a creepy guy like this was stalking that sister of yours, I had no idea he was here because you wanted him to be. Our information had some gaps, sorry, sorry.”  
  
“You think an apology will help?” Mukuro growled in reply.  
  
“Observe.” Forcefully she grabbed the girl by her black hair and yanked her head around, Kumagawa was laying down on Enoshima Junko’s lap, not only was his head in tact but even his arm which had been injured so terribly earlier was healed. There was not even a single speck of dust on his JUNKO LOVE sweatshirt, his love for her in the form of that sweatshirt was completely undirtied.

“Do you want a family so bad you’re willing to put up with these fakes? It’s not like your brother is anything special, he’s nothing but a traumatized kid being kept alive by Ajimu Najimi. The only way he knows to keep living is to keep pretending, he is human yet not human.”

“You just don’t get his appeal, big sis Kagenui. He’s a minus he’s not meant to be understood by you, he doesn’t need to be human he can just keep being a minus.” A girl with a ribbon in her hair, and a tattered school uniform suddenly appeared on the scene. “You said didn’t you! You said that if I could convince him to stop being immortal and go back to being a pathetic weakling and leave him alone.”  
  
“You’re right, I deemed him harmless for your sake. That’s why I reset him like that.” Kagenui said, meeting the girl’s eyes. “I don’t get why you’re all so crazy for him though. There doesn’t seem to be much too him, an act stitched together by lies to deal with trauma.”

Emukae’s eyes widened. She had the look in her eyes of a corpse whose eyes had been left open. “The minus can’t be analyzed by humans, unconsciously, unrelate, unworthy on top of that irresponsible! Dealing with an inhuman amount of trauma and stress.  It’s only natural our human nature would rot away.”  
  
However she had not showed up for no reason at all, instead she was dragging somebody along behind her. She threw him helplessly in front of the others, and now that all six actors had gathered it had officially become a sene. Yasuke Matsuda straightened up, a burn mark on the side of his wrist from where he had been handled. “Uuuggggh I was wondering how this could possibly be worse than getting kidnapped by some weird girl, but my kidnapper just dragged me back to Junko’s side again. How inhumane.”

“Some weird girl? You’ve forgotten your corpse bride already… how cruel, Matsuda-senpai.” Her corpse eyes focused on him with a strangely tender scorn.  
  
If Kumagawa were awake he would have recognized the girl right away, Eukae Mukae his former underclassmen before he started taking care of Mukuro and Junko. However, he had his head crushed and was asleep peacefully on Junko’s lap. It seemed the girl usually only offered a lap to him if he died first so he was taking advantage of the rare opportunity. A lazy boy. Always leaving others to clean up his messes. Which was a lot since his entire life was a mess.  
  
“That’s enough. If you came to kill me then pay attention to me dammit, who cares about my lame little sister and lame boyfriend. You have the main event right here, why did you even make a fuss and drag Mastuda-kun here!?” Junko said, discontent at not receiving top billing.  
  
“Hmm, well it’s not like we’re planning this around you or anything.” Kagenui said, still holding onto the back of Mukuro’s head. “I just decided that I’d show up and kill you. I’m not clever so I don’t particularly care how it happens, if I can get your former loved ones to turn against you that also works.”  
  
“Yeah like that’s going to happen. Those disappointing people are going to stop acting like puppets and develop a free will of their own.” Junko said, her claws digging into Kumagawa possessively.  
  
“And how will you stop us? What can you do? Enoshima….” Suddenly that woman tilted her head to the side, a mad smile like a crescent moon cast a shadow on her eyes. “Former Enoshima Junko. Without your pawns you’re not a threat to me.”  
  
“Former?”  
  
“Haven’t you heard? There’s another person running around as Enoshima Junko right now, doing whatever she likes. A fake imitating a fake, haha. Or did your oh so reliable pawns not tell you that.”  
  
“That might be true, they’re a disappointing bunch,  but that girl you brought along with you doesn’t seem to be stable mabel either. Even if you convince Matsuda-kun, and my stupid sister to join your side I could probably break her. So don’t you want to settle this later alone?” Junko said, and the minus whose existence unnerved others by instinct found herself shaking.

Kagenui looked at the other girl and shrugged. “Fine then, as you say we’ll leave. Despite what I said, we have no interest in killing a sister in front of her twin.” As she said this she tilted her head at an uneven angle to glare down at both Mukuro and Yasuke.  
  
“Naturally, what I want you two to realize is that she isn’t your real sister. Nor is she your real childhood friend.”  
  
_Not my real sister? A fake sister?_ She who had always seen the real Junko who would do anything for despair, could she so easily believe that even that was a lie. Everything was a lie.

“Matsuda-kun, your entire life she just put on an act to get you to fall for her, you childhood was a stage play written and produced by her, and Ikusaba you too. She led you on believing that you’d think you were special for seeing her true face, but that was just another mask.”  
  
“...” Mukuro remained silent, to believe that the cruel side and the kind side of Enoshima Junko were both equally fake. That Junko’s real self she obsessed over for so long, thought herself special for understanding, thought it would be terrible if that girl was left alone and nobody else in this world would understand her not even her sister. That tragedy that she had cried over and over again to the point that she had run out of tears, that if Junko was just being herself, she would naturally, always be alone. That she was fundamentally incompatible with the world. All a lie? That there simply was no real Junko?  
  
“What exactly is it you two love so much about her? Why are you so loyal to the point of killing for her? You’re just obsessed with the idea of her.”  
  
“...” Matsuda remembered too it was not like Junko was always there for him, always supporting him. There was just one clearly manufactured incident that had made their connection special. If his mother had not died, if Junko had not been there just as he lost everything, would they even have gotten along? They might have just forgotten each other after primary school. He would be a face in the crowd to her. Was he just fighting so desperately because he wanted to return to that single moment when Junko was exactly the person he needed at the exact right time, and he felt nothing at all for the current Junko?  
  
“I’ll give you time to think it over. Prepare yourself in any way you’d like, but I hope you’ll turn against her.” Gaen jumped away from Mukuro finally, and landed on Emukae’s outstretched hand. “Out of consideration for Mukae, since Kumagawa’s harmless on his own I’d be willing to let him live if he severed all ties with you.”  
  
Mukae reached under Mukuro’s skirt and quickly severed the knife holster she was wearing around her leg with a rotten touch. She plucked the knife out, the blade looked like it had been stained with acid. “That’s right he’s only dangerous because he’s forcing himself to fight for people like you. He thinks he has to earn his place by your side. Us minus accept him for who he is, and Kumagawa-senpai… you should know better than to regift when giving presents to people. That’s the knife I gave you.”

Kumagawa’s unconscious body said nothing in response to her lecture.

“Whatever importance you think you had to him is wrong. He just wants other people around him, that’s why he can get along with anybody and wear any mask possible. It doesn’t really matter who, not to a fake like him-” Kagenui said, about to turn around when she was interrupted.  
  
“Why… Why are you after Junko and Kumagawa. There’s no reason for you to…” Mukuro spoke through her gritted teeth.  
  
“There is. Enoshima Junko simply isn’t human, she can’t be. A monstrous fake who deceived humans, everything she does is just another deception to get what she wants. We call that evil.”

“N...no you’re… You’re…” She knew her sister was rotten, wicked, a witch who manipulated others but to insist that there was nothing there, no real motivation, yet when trying to defend the real Junko the sister who had always been by her side could not come up with words.  
  
“We’re the good guys. I can’t ignore a con job of a person like that. If the only way she can live is by continually hurting and manipulating others than she’s better off dead.”  
  
“She’s not better off dead… don’t say she should have died just a long time ago like there was never even a chance for her to get better she was born a person with a chance to be happy just like you and me.”

“Weren’t you just thinking about that a moment ago? You’re a normal girl Mukuro, and so is Matsuda-kun. You don’t have to settle for those two fakes as your family members. You were just thinking ‘if only that girl had never loved me’.”

“...”

“It’s fine. It’s not your fault. Junko simply forced the idea of sisterhood on you. You don’t have to put up with a fake family like that, you don’t have to struggle to love them like real family.”

“...No.”  
  
Junko did not even say anything to defend herself. For once, Mukuro’s voice spoke up louder than her sisters. Kagenui finally turned her head away with a sneer.”Fine then, if you can’t choose between suffering the loss of a fake friendship, or a real one, then you should just lose both.”  
  
As Junko's hands brushed over Kumagawa's face she looked at his delicate feminine eyelashes for a moment and noticed tears well up in the corners of his eyes, she did not think much of it as she wiped them away. 

 

😈

 

Her family was a fake.  
There never had been any connection at all between them, she was just being led on by two talented liars. She had always known her sister was thoroughly fake and shallow, but the accusation that there was nothing to her sister at all even the parts that loved her to the point of despairing were just an act to control Mukuro had hit deep.

She wanted to believe desperately there was a real Junko somewhere. Even though the pain of that belief had hurt her entire life, had hurt her so much she had wanted to throw it away a moment ago, for some reason she now felt willing to fight to the death.  
  
Were those her real feelings, or what Junko had conditioned her to feel? Could she have been simply led on with stick and carrot to be loyal to her sister, an automatic response without thinking like pavlov’s dog.  
  
For some reason even though the supposed good guy Kagenui was offering her that out, that excuse, that she could simply kill Junko and free herself from everything she had done for Junko’s sake she felt like her entire existence was being denied. Every choice that she had made for the sake of Junko, those choices that made up her, Kagenui was denying all of her.

Yet she was not as good at speaking as Junko she felt like she would never put those feelings into words. She also did not want to settle things with violence, because she wanted to change from the old her who only knew to speak in the language of violence. So, she stayed somewhere in the middle indecisive.  
  
Kagenui decided to challenge them at the shrine that contained multiple stories. When they heard of this challenge via text message, after Kumagawa woke up they decided on a strategy. Junko would hide away while both Kumagawa and Mukuro faced Kagenui and Emukae. The moment he heard Emukae was alive, Kumagawa did not react in the troubling way in which any of them expected. He simply smiled and said _who wouldn’t be happy to hear their friend is alive._ Nor did he try to run away from her, despite the fact that the girl seemed determined to kill all his new friends to drag her back to his old life. _It’s my fault for leaving her all alone. So I’ll face her and talk things through with her._ To Kumagawa the best result was his current despair sisters, and his former minus friends to get along, so he aimed for that result as recklessly as ever without thinking.

Kumagawa and Mukuro ascended the shrine steps, while Junko and Matsuda left to hide expecting that would be it. It would be a simple two man fight to settle the matter with strength. Kumagawa stretched his arm which had been healed by his revival from the dead, and wore his Junko Love sweater over his uniform refusing to take it off like it was armor.

When they made it to the shrine, Kagenui was waiting for them alone. “You two are late, and I’m not friendly enough to wait for you. Mukae, went off on her own.”

『Mukae-chan...』  
  
“What is it devil boy? Did you think she would wait around until you were ready to face her? She’s not an objective marker or a checkpoint in your life journey.” Apparently being in Towa City had influenced her to start meta speaking.

『...』

  
“So what are we going to do? An outright brawl is fine with me. It’s simple. I’m all about violence, and so are you Mukuro. However, right now the teams are unfair don’t you think? A human vs a human and a monster.”  
  
Mukuro went quiet. The idea that Kumagawa could be put at risk made her freeze.  
  
On her own Kagenui snapped her finger. Kaiki who they had not told about the event, appeared suddenly and grabbed Kumagawa from behind. “If you want I’ll hold him back from fighting, and you can take her on alone.”

『No, wait let me fight! I have to fight.』Kumagawa said, struggling like a child.  
  
“Technically you don’t have to do anything. If you’re going to write a narrative at least write a good one with character agency.” Kaiki sighed, as he looped his arms underneath Kumagawa’s shoulders and lifted the weak boy up easily into the air.

“Well it seems like it’s worked out. Hmmm, not happy?”  
  
“No, I’m happy.” Mukuro said with no change in her expression or voice to indicate that. “I wanted to settle things with you to begin with, but why is Kaiki-kun here?”  
  
“Well, Kaiki-kun is a friend from college. We used to play four person shougi in the occult research club. Actualy, it was Kaiki-kun who was kind enough to sell us the information about your sister’s whereabouts.”

『Kaiki-kuuuuun, you cheap slut! You’ll do anything for money won’t you!』Kumagawa said with a dramatic wiggle of his legs in the empty air. Kaiki simply looked away.

“Kagenui-san! I’m on my sister’s side in this. Especially since MIsogi-chan’s no longer a part of this fight. So, please don’t hold back.” Mukuro said as she reached under her skirt and once more pulled out a combat knife with serrated edges.

The energetic and overflowing Kagenui suddenly grew cold in her voice. As if she was trying to be cruel to be kind with her final warning. “Your sister is a fake. She isn’t your real sister. Even if you recognize that the sister you believe to be real is a fake, your feelings won’t reach her, she won’t be grateful for this. To her all of those emotions of yours are just a means to an end.”  
  
“Even if that was true it’d be fine by me.” Mukuro said as she put one hand on the ground and assumed the first step of a basic fighting stance.” Aren’t emotionless younger sisters considered especially moe?”

She leaped into the air like a storm. The same unrelenting spiral kick she used to deal with the Madarai brothers. In one single movement she moved forward at a speed incomprehensible to the naked eye. She felt like a girl from a different dimension moving. She rushed forward at Kagenui, hitting her with blow after blow, only chaining them up and growing faster like a torrent that could only roll and grow stronger the more the wind blew.  
  
However, in a cutoff that seemed against the laws of physics itself, like Kagenui had simply snapped her fingers and commanded the win to stop blowing, all motion stopped as Kagenui grabbed Mukuro by her wrists and caught her, using her momentum to fling the girl around until she completed a full circle and was driven right into her knee. “Those are your feelings. But from the perspective of a good guy like me you must just be brainwashed. Junko twisted you around her little finger with words, so I’ll speak to you with my fists. It’s the only language people like us understand.”  
  
Mukuro felt a sudden whiplash as her motion was stopped. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object was just supposed to be a thought experiment but apparently the immovable object won. Standing on her high platform shoes at the floor of the temple she seemed completely unbothered by the furniture that had been thrown around and broken while she dodged Mukuro’s rampage. She seemed so absolutely confident that not a single hit would land. Now she held onto both of Mukuro’s wrists squeezing them so hard that she might flex one muscle and break both of them. Mukuro wondered if Kagenui wanted to settle this with violence why she kept lecturing her then. Perhaps being an adult meant always feeling entitled to lecture others.  
  
“But I wonder. I wonder. Even if you’re all right with it?” Kagenui did not do anything fancy, she did not deduce Mukuro’s moves, or use some secret fighting technique, holding her there she simply pulled Mukuro forward and bashed her head against Mukuro’s as she spoke. Kagenui’s head was so hard, and the force of her blow so much she could keep talking, while bashing Mukuro, over, and over, and over, as she felt crash after crash as reliable as the waves breaking against the shore Mukuro wondered if the cracks in her vision she saw forming were real or just metaphorical. “How about the rest of the world? Your friends? Your classmates? You’ve grown up on the battlefield surrounded by death, so perhaps you’re fine with it. But what about those you’re involving who have nothing to do with it? If she was able to do that because you kept her alive? Did they all consent to you putting them and their loved ones at risk?”  
  
Kagenui threw Mukuro hard enough that she crashed and cracked one of the stone dog statues. Mukuro was sure this time she had been fighting with everythin she had, why had she been doing nothing but take hits lately?  
  
Did she actually agree with Kagenui? Did she feel so guilty for keeping Junko alive that she was half assing this fight as a way to make up for the guilt without having to bring herself to be the one to finish Junko? Did she simply want to have things both ways, to be a good sister, but also to not have to continue living with the guilt of what she had done as Junko’s sister.  
  
Before Mukuro could recover there was a hand twisting her shirt lifting her up. “For example, Makoto-chan was it? What if because you allowed your sister to live, she murdered his little sister? What about Zenkichi-chan, what is his precious Medaka-chan was murdered by Junko? Do you think Pekoyama can still be friends with you without wanting to avenge what Junko did to them?”  
  
Mukuro was thrown through the air. She slammed up through the ceiling. She thought it was impossible to throw a human being and make a human sized hole in structure of a building like in movies and cartoons, but apparently she had been wrong. She heard the sounds of Kagenui kicking the door open and her platform shoes clacking on the stairs and realized she would be coming soon.  
  
“What about her? Do you think your sister really wants to continue living a life where she can never truly feel real? No matter how hard they try, no matter how many lies they repeat, a fake can never become the real thing. Someone who cannot adapt to their surroudings, who has to destroy the world to fit in anywhere at all, should just go die.”

She ascended all the way to the roof where Mukuro had been thrown. Mukuro her body limp hanging like a broken doll rolled her eyes over to see Kagenui’s approach, her hands on her hips as she walked, balanced, as confident as ever. “Or, are you convinced you can stop all of that? That you can save everybody and even Junko herself like some hero. But how proud, how cruel, can you be? Putting all of your fellow humans at risk for that.”  
  
It was sheer force in its concentration.  
The power to kill.  
Pure killing intent, Kagenui the violent destroyer. Everything apart from her fighting skills had been subtracted from her as a person, and she was perfectly at peace with that, perfectly balanced, unlike Mukuro who was desperately trying to manage the unbalance between Junko and the rest of the world.  
  
The next moment she was lifted up in the air again, like a kid juggling a soccer ball Kagenui chained a number of blows to keep Mukuro airborne with only her extended foot. It only stopped on a whim when kagenui decided on another version of violence, catching her by the wrist again and letting her dangle as she pummeled the girl with a combo of punches in her other hand. Mukuro’s ribs took blow after blow, shaking like a punching bag.  
  
“Our job is to stop tragedy before it happens. Whatever you consider right is up to you, but don’t force the consequences onto other people! You don’t get to decide for the whole world whether it’s worth the risk of keeping Junko alive.”  
  
At the time when she was watching Makoto being threatened the same way by Munakata, another good guy who fought for the right thing, who fought for justice, Mukuro had watched Makoto come up with argument after argument for why she should live, why it was the right thing to do to give her a chance to repent.  
  
Yet on the receiving end now Mukuro could not say a single thing in Junko’s defense. She had been racking her brain this entire time trying to come up with a reason why she loved her sister so much, to counter Kagenui’s assertion that her feelings for Junko did not belong to her they were just a manipulation on Junko’s part.  
  
It was not like Kagenui was trying to kill some innoncent and unknowing younger sister she needed to protect. Mukuro knew exactly the person Enoshima Junko was. Kagenui was right when she asserted that Junko had used and abused her, her whole life. Not only that she was sure if given the chance, Junko would try to kill everybody precious to Mukuro to share that despair with her sister, which meant not only her loved one Makoto, but Makoto’s younger sister could be at risk, or Fuyuhiko for Pekoyama, or Medaka for Zenkichi. Not only that but even her actions right now in protecting Junko would mean nothing to her, her sister would never show her gratitude. It would be just like before, where Mukuro one sidedly claimed she was the only one who could understand Junko and she would be lonely without her sister’s love.  
  
Not a single thing Kagenui said was wrong. Junko was all of those things. She was selfish. She was as close to a classical literary villain as a human being could come. She’s right, she’s right, she’s right, Mukuro had that fact pounded into her over and over again as Kagenui’s fist collided with her face.  
  
Yet she still could not.  
She could not.  
Why?  
Before she had neither good nor evil, hope nor despair inside of her, she existed entirely remote from the world and was completely empty in order to do what Junko asked of her. Now she had so much of both in her that she was about to be torn in half by more than just Kagenui’s fists half breaking her body.  
  
Choose, choose, choose, if she chose Junko she would be putting Makoto’s hope at risk, his family, his normal life that made him so normally happy. If she chose Makoto, then she would find her happiness by letting this woman kill her own sister right here right now.  
  
Then there was Kumagawa, he would be abandoned by his older sister again, unable to save her just like Ajimu.  
  
Mukuro was not unko though, she was not even Medaka, or Makoto, she was not somebody who could save everyone she was a girl only good for killing. Why was the decision being placed on her suddenly? It was crushing her worse than Kagenui’s fists.  
  
She had changed too much. If she chose Junko right now she would be living with the guilt of siding with evil for the rest of her life. She had finally started, she had finally desired to be a good person who could save others like Makoto.  
  
Perhaps Kagenui was right and it was a sin itself, it was a fundamental wrong to play fake family with both Kumagawa and Junko. Treating those two like human, humanizing those two, when all they ever did was put others at risk.

“I’m getting worried about Emukae, let’s go take a look.” She threw Mukuro up to the ceiling once more, and then punched her face, again, again, using her head as a bludgeoning tool to make cracks in the concrete. Then finally one last hit at her chin to break her through the ceiling once more. Kagenui took off jumping, and followed up giving Mukuro one more blow through the air. Then Mukuro saw Kagenui’s image disappear, and reappear over her as she aimed a kick in Mukuro’s back and forced her down.  
  
Mukuro landed in a pile of broken wood and rumble, just like last time Kagenui was standing on top of her and she was completely useless. All the weapons, knives, guns, wires she had prepared for this fight were useless and they had settled it like a fist to fist street brawler. She looked to the side and saw Junko and Matsuda standing there with Emukae. Kumagawa had rushed to the ceiling, only to be tackled and restrained again by Kaiki.  
  
“And now, let’s listen to your sister say a familiar ungrateful line.” Kagenui said, as if to boast how she had been right.  
  
Mukuro did not think it was cruel, only the truth. She knew what Junko was going to say next seeing her sister’s struggle, the same thing she always said. Mukuro prepared herself for disappointment. The moment her sister opened her mouth she would hear disappointment again dripping from her sister’s lips.  
  
She reached her hand covered in a Fenrir tattoo towards Junko, only for Kagenui to stomp hard on the back of he hand cracking the bones in the middle. Her heel drove through the center of her hand like a blade, getting blood on and dirtying her Fenrir tattoo. “Why did you even get that tattoo in the first place? You can’t fight or do a single thing on your own. Not a lone wolf at all.”  
  
Why.  
Why indeed.

😈 **And so night Fell and the Moon Rose Up** 😈

 

 

😈  **A Few Minutes Before NightFall** 😈

 

“Really, all you do is cause trouble for others. Why don’t you just go die already?” Yasuke Matsuda asked Junko, as he led her down to the secret passageway in the shrine that would save her life from Kagenui.  
  
“If you want me to die so badly then why did you volunteer to be the one to lead me away from danger, Yasuke-kun?” Junko had been silent in thought for awhile, but she could not resist pointing out the hypocrisies of others she was practically hard wired for it.  
  
“Well I’m hoping if they kill who you deserves to die, they’ll also kill me because I deserve to die for just protecting you.”  
  
“Stellar logic there.”  
  
“Here’s some better logic, fuck you.”  
  
“No thanks, Misogi is doing a good enough job of that already.”  
  
Their banter continued as usual. They spat acid at one another doing minimal damage, as neither of them could talk seriously around each other any more. Junko would probably die before she took a single situation seriously without laughing that weird laugh of hers, and Matsuda always wanted to hide his serious emotions.  
  
So even though Matsuda was leading her, there was some considerable distance between them. Which is why he did not notice as just then a hole was bunred in the roof and a girl fell down from it. The same girl from earlier, in the tattered sailor uniform and the ribbon burned at the fringes.  
  
“Ouch! Hey you! Are you stupid? Why are you standing there doing nothing a pretty girl just fell in front of you?”  
  
“Ah, sorry. I’m lost in my thoughts a little.” Yasuke leaned forward to offer the girl a hand, completely forgetting that she was one of the two that had come to kill Junko. Really, what kind of shallow just loses their brains every time there’s a girl in trouble in front of them. Oh wait, that’s me. Dick for brains. Okay, no more insulting myself there’s a story to tell.  
  
The girl’s eyebrows raised for a moment, and her post death looking eyes widened as they focused on the image of his hand in her face. “Yeah… that’s right, you’re still my Matsuda-kun. After all this time.”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“That’s okay, I’ll forgive you for forgetting about me. It’s just because Kumagawa-kun erased your memories.”  
  
“What kind of terrible person erases another person’s memories!” Yasuke said, visibly upset. “Whoever does that kind of thing deserves to die, seriously, just come and kill me already.” He was just upset at himself as usual.  
  
“Oh I guess you don’t remember because you don’t have a super brain unlike me.” Junko said, crossing her arms behind him.  
  
“God, why doesn’t somebody just surgically erase your personality already and do the rest of the world a favor? Oh wait I tried that and it doesn’t work. You’ve got an incurable case of stink personality.” Yasuke hissed back at her.

“I guess I’ll be a good girl-”  
  
“Ha!” Yasuke wanted to break into maddening laughter right there and never stop laughing at the idea of Junko doing something good, but he had to continue being sane for the rest of the story sadly.  
  
“And explain. Basically in the first little misadventure we had with Ryoko-chan, Kumagawa, and you, Mukae was there as well. We were all good friends! I just wanted to get along with her, so I ended up playing with her a little bit and convincing her to commit suicide.” Junko said as she covered her mouth with her red tipped fingers. “Oopsie, that’s why you shouldn’t tell people to go die Yasuke-kun, they might take it seriously. Be nicer to girls we’re all so sensitive.”  
“You’re about as sensitive as a mallet to the face.” Yasuke said glaring at her. “So basically, if I leave her around you she’ll be in danger. Then, I guess I’ll just take her away from you.” Yasuke moved to grab her wrist rather than her hand avoiding realizing her power right at that moment. He started to race up the steps intending to leave Junko behind. Mostly because she was annoying him, and he hated her, which he thought was a pretty good reason.

Junko, realizing she had gone too far at poking at Matsuda’s buttons raced after him. “Yasuke-kun get back here, you’re supposed to be tragically trying to protect me again! You can’t suddenly change roles like that! Are you saying protecting anybody would be fine as long as they’re a tragic crazy girl? You big slut!” She was a stickler for character consistency even when nobody else was.

After they reached the top of the tower Yasuke collapsed on the ground. Apparently never eating, sleeping three hours a night, and laying around all day reading manga was terrible for your stamina. ‘Haaaa-haaaa-haaaaa. Oi! You, are you okay? What’s your deal anyway? And don’t bitch about me suddenly grabbing you and running, I was just kidnapping you in return for you kidnapping me yesterday so we’re even.”  
  
“I… I’m fine. I’m fine so… I’m Emukae Mukae! Now that we’re reunited again, we can get married right?” She said, red faced standing up once more looking at him like he was the darling in the center of her eyes.  
  
“...Yeah, that’s right.” Matsuda said without thinking, and then realized this was the same girl that kidnapped him yesterday and teamed up with another person to murder Junko. _Wait! That’s not it! Why the hell am I nodding in agreement! Shit! Holy shit! What is wrong with me!What the hell is this girl! This isn’t a joke she’s dangerous!  At this point I’m the only one to blame why do I keep getting myself into these situations am I some kind of masochist?_ “Oh, I forgot. I’m actually kinda busy right now. If I don’t go tell Junko she’s stupid she might start to think she’s got redeemable qualities or something so I gotta-”  
  
He made a motion for the stairs only to find he was completely unable to move his foot. He looked down to see a knife had stabbed through the slippers he was wearing, leaving his toes a bloody mess. _Oh that would explain it. There’s a knife in my foot._ “What the fuck! Aaaggggghhhhhhhh!” Matsuda shouted as his brain caught up to the current situation. “Kumagawa you bastard can’t you be friends with a normal person!”  
  
Emukae moved in a moment grabbing the knife and ripping it out of the center of his foot. “Why do you run away? Why do you run away? You just gave me your hand again, right? Even if you’ve forgotten you still gave me your hand. That’s because you love me because you love me, you love me, do you? We were already lovers, weren’t we? We don’t need memories between us, we just need love. We can start again where we left off. What other business do you have after all? You couldn’t have anything which is more important than me. You were born to love me. You were born to love me. You don’t need to do anything after having met me, you don’t need to worry about Junko anymore.”  
  
As she slowly looked up at him every feature drained away from her face. She was so covered in shadow to the point of being eclipsed, a completely inhuman face. They only details his mind could process were two lights for her eyes, and a waxing crescent which spread across her lips like a moon in a night sky of pitch black.  
  
“Don’t mess around… I could seriously hurt you I could… perform brain surgery on you. God, I’m so lame, I should have just done push ups and gotten a rocking hot body like Zenkichi.”  
  
There were so many things he regretted, apparently that was one of them now too as he struggled completely unable to move his foot. He realized why this girl in particular was so terrifying for him.  
 _  
_ _So then I’m out of options. I passed the point of return a long time ago._ _  
_ _Hey, I said earlier I’d protect you if I had to didn’t I? But there’s someone else I have to protect at all costs. They’re hopeless if I don’t protect them… So I’ve decided I’ll sacrifice anything to protect them._

 _I’m awful. I don’t particularly want to think about that. If I forgot the person I care for and if they died… that thought is unbearable… So I’ll protect them. No matter what happens I’ll protect them._ _  
_ _  
_ _As Matsuda spoke softly, he placed both of his hands around ‘that thing’s neck. KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL_

_He blankly turned his line of sight towards ‘that thing’ on the top of the bed. The light from those eyes had disappeared - all that was left was a deep darkness. Those eyes held a darkness deeper than the color of darkness itself._

_I was right, wasn't I? About you remembering? That's why you can't remember me? You remembered that I wasn't a particularly important person to you...so that's why you can't remember?"_

The memories flashed through his mind quicker than he could register them. That was right, the reason he was agitated so much right now was because somebody was holding a mirror in front of his face, and showing him what he looked like, to that thing that he strangled for Junko’s sake.  
  
If there’s a grudge against me for this, then there’s a grudge against me. I don’t mean that person, I mean I’ll hold a grudge against himself.  
  
The grudges of other people, the feelings of other people, it did not matter he was a self absorbed prick to the end, but honestly I think sticking to such a terrible personality requires true dedication.  
  
Just then it was not Matsuda, but rather Junko who appeared suddenly and kicked the side of Emukae’s head in, sending her flying towards the edge of the roof.  
  
“Oy, are you alright? Eeeh, Emukae?” Matsuda called after her, the girl who just stabbed him, because he was an idiot.  
  
“Yeah, I’m alright. I’m so happy that you’re worried about me. But we’re lovers, and ‘Emukae’ is so cold and distant, call me ‘mukae’ and I’ll call you ‘Yasuke’ too.”  
  
“Ummm, hello I’m the one you’re supposed to kill?” Junko said, waving her hand in front of Emukae’s face.  
  
“God, attention hungry much.” Yasuke said under his breath.  
  
“God, got a thing for Yanderes much.” Junko spat back.  
  
“God, like you should be talking.” Yasuke spat back again.  
  
Like any of them should be talking. Let the he who is not yandere throw the first stone. That would have to be Makoto but they had left her behind.  
  
Matsuda watched Emukae pick her broken body up in stunned amazement, Junko had kicked her particularly hard in the head to keep her down. “You… You… don’t feel pain, don’t you?”  
  
“No way! Pain is painful! What I feel right now is not pain, but ‘love’. I don’t even mind that I died, because dying is an acceptable form of love… anything can be an acceptable form of love because a girl’s love is far stronger than anything.”

She moved forward with an extended hand, but Junko predicted her move grabbing her by the wrist. “Jeez what is that zombie movie like power of rotting you have anyway? You accelerated the frequency to stimulate microbes… or do you quicken the aging process of things? Are you secreting highly acidic sweat, because god you stank girl!”  
  
“Oh, I already told you it’s impossible to analyze. There’s no logic to it, in other words we have no regret for real!” At that moment Emukae broke her own wrist in a fraction of a second and turned her whole body around like she was possessed in an exorcism movie and managed to dodge Junko’s predicted block throwing her hands around the girl’s neck. She dead lifted Junko in the air easily.  
  
“I see… so you’re not acidic at all. Just a totally basic bitch…” Junko said between griftted teeth as she felt her neck burning. Even worse than the idea that her neck might snap and half fro this girl’s grip alone, was the fact that she had to see her beautiful scarf that she had decided to wear today slowly rot away.

“Do you know what the difference between a minus and an ultimate despair is? You can keep on enjoying despair all you want, but the minus have grown tired of despairing. To prevent ourselves from going mad, we play the fool on stage.”  
  
“I think we’ve gone over this topic already.”  Junko said, between increasingly desperate breaths.  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai was the one who explained that to me. No matter what he’ll never enjoy despair the same way you do, so why are you dragging him down with you?”  
  
“Oi, back off bitch. It’s none of your business anyway.”  
  
“Jeez, just more of that act. Even on the brink of death you can’t speak your real feelings can you. It’s my fault, but it’s not my fault for getting tricked by you. That’s why this time for sure. Please wait a moment darling Matsuda-kun while I take out the trash.” Her fingers tightened as she dangled Junko off of the edge of the shrine’s roof. “Do you know why a rose is beautiful? Because it’s plucked before it withers. You’re no good as anything else, so please die and become a beautiful memory for Kumagawa-senpai. A tragic loss to make him bloom into an even more beautiful minus.”

She saw the last of her scarf burn away and felt a burning on her neck. Enoshima Junko’s eyes closed, half a second was all she had to think but she could think of ten thousand things in that time. At least she thought she could, but all she could see was the back of that boy dressed in all black, walking away from her, leaving him behind. That was right if he abandoned her, if she died right here, then he could truly become happy. He could spend the rest of his life chasing the same shallow happiness over and over again. That was why, she decided she would never leave him alone, they were going to become miserable together. With everything she had she kicked suddenly her boot hooking around Emukae’s neck and cutting straight through it.  
  
Her head popped right off of her, like cutting a flower from its stem. Junko watched it fly through the air, and land back on the rooftop with a plop. “Jeez, I keep telling you guys despair solves everything but you never listen to me.”

Matsuda finally finished working the knife out of his foot and rushed to her side catching her as the body that had been holding her up went limp. When he saw Junko straighten up push away from him and start to poke the body with her toe an unpleasant look spread across his face. More unpleasant than usual at least. This was max grumpy Matsuda! “You already killed her, you don’t have to make literally everything worse. Resist the urge for once.”  
  
“I’m just following standard zombie movie protocols. You don’t turn your back on a recently dead body.”  
  
“There’s literally no brain attached to that body, you don’t have to be a neurologist to figure out that it can’t-”  
  
Yasuke had run his mouth so the universe needed to prove him wrong. Suddenly the body moved on its own, grabbing her boots and starting to erode them.  
  
“Junko take your damn pointy shoe off!”  
  
“But these are my best heels!”  
  
“How has natural selection not killed you already? Whose fault is it for prolonging your life this long you human failure, oh wait it’s mine.” Yasuke shouted as he grabbed her and ripped her out of her boots to get her away from the body. They both stumbled backwards on one another.  
  
The body fumbled around and found its head, attaching it once more and tying a ribbon the ribbon from her hair around her neck to hold it in place. “Wow! You really care about Kumagawa-senpai, right despair? However, it’s time that you leave both of them. I’ll take good care of them. Because, those two only need another minus to understand them. They’ll be so happy, happy, happy, happy when you’re dead, living with you is just misery.”  
  
“Yeah that’s hot nonsense. Explain how you can survive getting your head kicked off first I care more about that.” Yasuke said, feeling too science based for all this supernatural nonsense.  
  
“My minus is Raff-rafflesia. I can control everything that rots with these hands, even the rotting flesh of a zombie.” She said, smiling pleasantly as she touched the sides of her face ignoring the light burning.  
  
“Goddamnit Kumagawa! I told you no reckless foreshadowing about zombies! It’s your fault we’re suddenly dealing with a zombie… somehow!” Yasuke knew he was being stupid, he just wanted to vent.  
  
“Come on Matsuda-kun. Let’s finish Enoshima together. Our enemy. Then, once she’s out of the way. We can get married! Marry me! We must get married! Please marry me! We should get married! Married now! Marry, marry, marry, marry, marry, let’s get maaaaarrried!” That same sickening crescent of a smile spread across her face, like a case of lunar madness he felt himself getting pulled by its gravitational pull. 

He felt paralyzed by that image of himself in the mirror. His face might have looked still alive, but he could see his image in that portrait was growing more and more rotten. Before he could say anything, suddenly the roof broke open and Kagenui jumped through it and performed some kind of finishing combo move on Mukuro.

 

 

😈  **A few minutes before the Moon Fell, for Kumagawa** 😈

 

 

『What the hell are you doing let me fight!』Kumagawa said as he pulled with everything he had against Kaiki, like a beast rattling the bars of his cage. 『I have to fight or I’ll lose.』

“Kumagawa. You’ve done enough. You can give up..”

『Give..?? Why…? Why… I have to fight.』The moment Kaiki let go of him, Kumagawa did not jump in front of Mukuro. There was no energy in his body left to do that. He slumped forwad falling onto his knees. He looked at his own hands which were perfectly functional now, because a woman had caved his head in, and then threatened to kill Junko while he was asleep. All because he had taken the time to try to heal naturally rather than undoing it with all fiction. His fingers trembled, and he felt himself sink further and further into shadow, like there was nothing of him, no face, no eyes, no heart, no soul, nothing inside of him but a two dimmensional shadow. He was the absence of all things, he was the absence of light, the absence of color, monochrome, just pitch black and pure white. Yet, even to him there was nothing Kaiki was staring right at him.『Why are you looking at me like that? Ive… I... 』  
  
He stared at his empty hands, his crooked looking fingers that had been broken and healed all over again and again, to the point where they looked off. He looked until he could not bear to look anymore, and hid his face away from Kaiki. He did not want to be seen, he did not want that man to look at nothing, he did not want to gaze at and be gazed back at.『I… have to fight… I have to fight more… More, more, more...』

“I suppose, if you want to be a happy person, or a winner, you have to fight.”

『I’ll kill you. And then I’ll kill her. I’ll fight. I’ll fight. I’ll fight. Anything that gets in the way of Junko’s happiness, I’ll destroy-』

“Kumagawa, I like money.”

『Surprising. I guess I really didn’t understand you.』

“I’ll tell you why. It’s because money can take the place of everything. You can buy things. You can buy lives. You can buy people. You can but hearts. You can buy love for 284 yen. You can buy happiness. You can buy dreams. It’s precious but on top of that, it’s not something that is irreplaceable. That’s why I like it. Conversely, I hate irreplaceable things. ‘I can’t live without this’ or ‘That’s the reason I’m alive’ or ‘That is the purpose for which I was born.’ Putting scarcity value on things like that pisses me off to no end."

They were utterly similiar in nature, both of them cloaked in gloominess and misfortune but neither of them understood one another.Kumagawa who wanted to save people, who measured things in wins and losses, he thought Kaiki of all people would be able to understand him expressing everything he did in terms of gain and loss from profits. But they never came to an understanding.  
  
Even after all of that, even after all of that bad blood, after running away from each other Kaiki was shouting out his true feelings for him to hear. Even though he was the cause of this situation, even though he did not care how it resolved as long as it benefited him. What did it matter trying to explain himself, Kumagawa blinked, not comprehending.

“What did you think I was that kind of dull person that hoarded money? Who spent every second of my life worrying whether I’d lose the money I’ve gained! If your friends mean so much to you that you’d die to save them, why do you spend every second of every day worrying about losing them? Are you having fun then? If they have value, then you should value them, and use them!”

『They’re not the ones… they’re not the ones who need to be useful. I’m… I’m unnecessary otherwise. I’m an unneeded child. That’s why I need to fight. I need to-』  
  
“Who cares if you’re unneeded? Do I need to spend my money on a five star hotel and order lobster room service while lounging around in a designer bathrobe after showering for two hours in cold water and drinking wine! No! I’m still going to do it though!”

『I don’t think I needed that mental image.』

“Since when do human beings only do what they need? How many humans do you know that do that? Humans are greedy, they live for what they want, they’ll never stop wanting things. Even when they want something so badly they can die, they’ll change their mind and want something else a week later.”

『Then I’m...』  
  
“You guys want to be a family so badly, you’re willing to risk the whole world for it. Can’t you see, they feel the same way you do, so they’re trying to get beaten up in your place.”

『I'm an immortal man you know.』 

"If you're really immortal, then why are you constantly killing yourself trying to save others? If you're really immortal, keep living, forever and ever and don't act like you're gonna die from losing a few people." 

『Is… is it alright to give up like that? Like, ‘since this is bad, let’s go with this?’』

“You can because you’re human. There is nothing irreplaceable. There is nothing that can’t be substituted. If everything is equally worthless, you should have as much fun as possible with what you have instead of lamenting what you’d lose. Is it fun, hurting yourself like that because you’re terrified you’ll lose otherwise.”

『No, it’s not fun. It’s not fun at all. None of this is fun.』The corners of Kumagawa’s eyes watered, and he started to tremble. His hands that were clenched around his face to hide it away slowly loosened. The river was overflowing, it was flooding, he could not simply let these things run through him anymore unconfronted. HIs shoulders looked weak and about to crumble but before he could cave into two halves, Kaiki laid his black jacket on top of Kumagawa’s shoulders.

『This isn’t working, but… I can try again?』  
  
“You can try as many times as you like. It’s not all fiction that enabled you to do that. When you were younger you tried to find a family and you failed, but instead of dying right then you did not give up and because of that you were able to meet those girls. As long as you keep living, something good might happen, that’s what it means to be human.”

『Or something bad..』Kumagawa said, cracking a smile and staring forward in between the cracks in his fingers.

 

😈 **And so, Mukuro's Decision** 😈

 

At that exact moment as all three parties converged Kagenui waited for Junko to say the same line that she always did. To admonish her sister for being as disappointed as she always was.  
  
What happened at that moment, at the intersection of three parties was utterly unexpected, like an unpredictable chemical reaction. At that moment Junko shouted. “Big sis… Don’t die in a boring way! You’re my sister aren’t you?”

A less terrible response than normal. Progress! Baby steps! Junko was a baby so all her progress took the form of baby steps. Kagenui simply stood there with her hand on her hip. “Kumagawa, do you want to go next?”  
  
At this, at the sight of his bloody sister, at the sight of Junko’s burn wounds around her neck, at this mess of a scene where none of them were strong enough to stand up against Kagenui Kumagawa turned his head back and laughed, covering his eyes gave little effect as he cried and laughed at the same time. 『Aaaaahahahahahaha. Declaring yourself the winner are we? You talented elites are so conceited, you can’t win if the loser hasn’t accepted the loss yet.』  
  
At that moment Mukuro punched the ground with her bloodied hand, and dislodged Kagenui’s hell from it. She forced herself up with enough strength to further crack the wooden roof. “I haven’t conceded yet, not to your fists or to your words. I haven’t accepted either.”  
  
“Didn’t you listen to me? Whatever you value, whatever you want to fight for is up to you…” Kagenui purposefully let herself fall off balance, slanting her head so one eye appeared like she was a predator. “But don’t force those ideals onto other people, and don’t cling to other people’s ideals in place of your own.”  
  
Perhaps she was right, it was wrong to just use Junko’s despair, or Makoto’s hope to fill her up. “Yeah, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you can be as right as you want, and keep lecturing kids like an adult that’s fine… because I’ll be wrong. I can live with being wrong.” Mukuro said as she suddenly lifted the her skirt to pull out a gun again. She took pot shots at Kagenui expecting her to dodge.  
  
When she dodged as elegantly as normal, by jumping into the air on her platform shoes, Mukuro rushed forward and caught her midair. She did not bother to spin, or to chain blows, or even with fancy footwork like Kagneui, she just tackled her off the side of the building, the most immediate and brutal solution.  
  
The two of them started to plummet together. This time as they plummeted it was Mukuro who did the talking. “It’s not other people! Junko and Kumagawa aren’t other people! They’re my family! I’ll force my ideals onto my family. And since they’re my family, I’ll lie to them, I’ll cause trouble for them, I’ll make them worry. I’ll owe them things. Things I’ll never be able to repay. However, I think that’s okay.”  
  
As the two of them plummeted, Mukuro did not bother to hit her any further. She had already figured out the way to win. She reached forward and grabbed that woman by the neck while her other hand, grabbed onto the wire she had let run from her body the moment they had started to fall. THey stopped dead in the air as the wire ran out of spool, and they both dangled their.  
  
“Kagenui-s-s-an. Miss good guy. If you say that it’s evil to take their side, then I will shoulder the burden of that evil. If lying is evil, then I’m fine with being evil. Then I’m fine doing the wrong thing. I don’t need them to like me. I’m fine with being the worst kind of person. The second worst person on earth after Junko. What was I thinking, worrying about whether I’d be forgiven, or whether I’d be liked… I was already starting out as the enemy of the whole world.”

I would put the rankings at.  
1) Junko  
2) Matsuda  
3) Mukuro  
  
In my opinion.  
Kumagawa was not even near the top ten. He even lost at being the worst, poor guy.  
  
“As long they call me sister, it’s enough for me… Even if I’m evil, I’m sure Makoto will be able to forgive me. I’ll take advantage of his kindness too.” She let one finger go threateningly. “Now, surrender. You’re afraid to touch the ground aren’t you? That’s why you’re always standing on things, and jumping, and wearing those high shoes.”  
  
Mukuro had figured it out, her weakness.  
  
“Tch, what are you doing? When I last saw you, you were a little kid always muttering to herself and quivering about her sister.”

That was the closest thing she was ever going to get to a surrender fro Kagenui. Mukuro was used to translating for difficult, head strong people like Junko who could never speak directly.  
  
Kumagawa grabbed the line like it was fishing wire, and pulled the two of them all the way back to the roof. Kagenui had grown silent, and Kumaawa right away went to fuss over Mukuro and her injuries, while Junko got close just to watch the pained faces her sister would make.  
  
The moment Kumagawa appeared on the rooftop, Emukae went dead silent and dropped the knife he had stolen from Mukuro.  
  
“Jeez, what led to a bunch of weirdoes like this gathering together.” Kagenui said scratching at her bob of a haircut. “Was it really just random chance?”

『It wasn’t random chance. It was all of our choices.』Kumagawa without looking up fat her from the numerous injuries on Mukuro’s body. 『Everything was a choice. Even transferring to hope’s peak instead of Sandbox was a choice I made at the last minute. Every choice I made in my life led me to this point, and I chose these two as my family.』

Kagenui looked down at her own hands. The same ones that were no good for anything but violence. Before she could say anything, Kaiki appeared behind her like the damn shadow he was.  
  
“I still ain’t done yet. I haven’t lost just yet. I still have to fight Kumagawa-”  
  
She swung in the air, but rather than Kumagawa who was not even looking at her her fist collided with Kaiki’s face who had moved in front of him. He really hated violence, and getting punched or kicked. He wondered what he was doing. Kumagawa’s stupidity might in fact be infectious.  
  
“Do you remember the theory of fundamental evil?” He said, a fist still twisting into the side of his face.  
  
“What an optimistic thing to bring up right now, you damn gloomy bastard.” She said, twisting her fist further.  
  
『Ehhhhh? What’s that.』  
  
“It’s a thing most high schoolers should know.”

“You’ve gotta assume Misogi is at a primary schooler’s reading level. He’s so cute, like stupidly cute, actually not cute at all just stupid.” Junko said sitting next to him and pinching his cheek.

『Hey, hey, hey! I’m okay at reading as long as it’s manga!』  
  
“The theory of fundamental good it was developed by Chinese Philosopher Mencius. He said that humans are born fundamentally good. If the theory of fundamental good is an ideal, then fundamental evil is realism. Desire lies at the core of human nature. And humans are ruled by those desires. That was the less tactful theory of Xun Zi. He claimed that humans are born evil.” Kaiki said, standing in front of the moon that was now apparent now that they were all on the roof. It seemed gothic mood lightning just followed him around naturally as a cloud had been covering the moon before he began talking.

“Born… Evil? Like you think Junko is, Kagenui-san?” Mukuro asked, looking up from where she was getting sewn up.  
  
“Thus, if a person does good, that is not their true self, but a lie. That’s why I don’t even bother, I like to be honest telling lies is bad you know. If you tried to better yourself, it would be a lie, a fake, and due only to hypocrisy.”  
  
“Hypocrisy?” Yasuke repeated, feeling like he already had the title of world’s biggest hypocrite on lock.  
  
“Artificial. And thus, by definition, deliberate. A lot of thought gets put into a well crafted lie. All good is thereby hypocrisy, and therefore, it constitutes a deliberate attempt to be good. We discussed that a lot, didn’t we Kagenui-san?” Kaiki asked, his eyes narrowing on the fist in his face staring at it's holder passive agressively.  
  
Kagenui finally let go, and unballed her fingers. “Yeah, it was a game. Given the real thing, and an indistinguishable fake, which is worth more? Naturally my response was the real thing was worth more, Oshino-kun asserted that they had equal value, though. Izuko thought whichever one was more useful had more worth. And Kaiki said…”  
  
“The fake is of far greater value. In its deliberate attempt to be real, it’s more real than the real thing. In wearing the mask you become the mask. Well, I don’t want to bother to explain the rest, go buy a book and read if you want to know philosophy that badly it’s rather cheap.” Kaiki said, looking away now that everybody’s eyes were on them. Apparently he disliked the spotlight, probably because of how pale his skin was it must burn easily.  
  
At that, Kagenui finally relaxed and let out a light hearted laughter. “Kaiki-kun you’re such a petty villain! No wonder you’re hanging out with these bad kids! You sure do say some neat things though. That’s the lesson I guess, a lesson that took me ten years to learn. If only I’d learned it earlier, us five friends might not have grown so distant.” At that she walked over to Emukae and put a hand on her shoulder. “Bored. We’re leaving.”

“Oh god she really is like a mix of me and Junko…” Mukuro muttered to herself horrified.  
  
“Besides, you weren’t really serious about fighting back there were you Mukuro? I never sensed a desire to kill. It wasn’t much fun for me.”  
  
“Well… that’s because you treated me like a human being, Kagenui-san. Even though we were both in Fenrir together and I called myself a weapon, and you saw my sister as inhuman, you called me a human. Thank you.”  
  
“Wow. Pathetic. I’m totally not acting like myself. Eh, Mukae is something wrong?”

Emukae broke away from her for a moment and looked to Kumagawa. Only then did Kumagawa stop tending to Mukuro and look back at her. “Kumagawa-senpai, come back. Everything’s still okay. Even though I died, I still want to play with you like we did before.”

『Mukae-chan. What happened to you?』  
  
“It’s exactly as Kaiki said. You undid my death, and because of that I never met you and died when a random car hit me. That time, there wasn’t even somebody to mourn my death, I died all alone and forgotten even by you Kumagawa-senpai. Then those supernatural club weirdoes meddled att Kaiki’s suggestion, and tried to revive me and I turned into this.”

『... So it’s my fault? Are you here for revenge?』  
  
“No, I’m here to take you back. Let’s go back together. We’ll tour the world and do what we want, we’ll have fun together, just like back then.”

『No, I can’t do that.』  
  
“So then, us, the rest of the minus, the weak people, did any of that mean anything to you? Or is what Kagenui-nee said true and all you care about is having someone around you it doesn’t matter who."

『It’s not that. We can’t go back to the past no matter what, Mukae-chan. You see, I did something terrible back then, because I was self absorbed and thought I was the root of all your issues I assumed me being out of your life would fix everything when you just wanted to be by my side. I don’t want to go back to being that kind of person who tramples all over your feelings again.』  
  
“Then what… then what am I supposed to do?”

『Come with us. Even if it will cause troubles, even if it’ll cause us to fight, even if we’ll only hurt each other again, you should come with us.』Kumagawa held out his hand.  
  
“Are you happy with these people? Is that why you won’t leave them? Are you happier without them?”    
  
『I don’t care about happiness. I don’t want to leave this family. I like them! Junko’s evil and she destroyed the world or whatever but she’s fun to talk to. Mukuro’s closed off, but she’s actually got a lot of good stuff to say when she opens up to you. Matsuda-kun’s really snippy and mean but he’s also kind of hilarious. I like that school Hope’s Peak, it’s full of pretentious rich people but they’re all okay when you get to know them. It’s like the island of misfit toys.』  
  
“I see. In that case… I’ll destroy them. That school… and all your friends! To be honest, there was no reason to try to kill Junko, we could have tried to save Mukuro and you without that. Yet, the reason why I wanted too…is because I am a monster now.”

『No you’re not, come back with me. You’ll be human as long as you’re surrounded by people-』  
  
“Don’t end up like this, Kumagawa-senpai. When humans end up as monsters, it’s the end of them.”

As Emukae said that, she kicked the knife that had been given as a gift and then regifted to Mukuro back to the older sister. Then turned around like she was dancing carefree and returned to Kagenui’s side once more.  
  
“Ah, it’s too bad, too bad. I didn’t get to destroy Towa City trying to kill Enoshima Junko now that I’ve lost.” Kagenui said behind her.  
  
“Wait, what? That sounds really cool actually, feel free to try to kill me Godzilla woman!” Junko called after her.  
  
Prompting Matsuda to pull at one of her pigtails. “Stop always making things more difficult then they need to be just by existing!” He snapped at her.    
  
“I’m not acting in character at all today, fine then I’ll leave you with something Kaiki-kun, or Oshino-kun will never say. Goodbye.” She gave one more polite bow, picking up Emukae by the waist and holding her at her side like she was some stuffed animal as she jumped up and ran away.  
  
Her path was obvious, she was going to exit the city from the secret pathway in the shrine. However even after they had left Kumagawa found himself stretching his empty hand forward trying to reach for Emukae.

『A monster… No, no, even if it’s pretending to be human you’ll become human eventually. Why, Mukae-chan, Ajimu-san, why are they like this?』  
  
His question hung in the air unanswered. Instead, Junko tackled him from where she had been sitting, wrapping her arms around his side possessively. Kumagawa barely resisted, the energy to resist depleted from his body. She was willing to recharge him though, with the energy of Junko love that would be created by rubbing up against that hot pink hand knitted sweater of his. “Well, I’m pretty good at pretending… or so I’ve been told.” She finally said, resting her head against him as they lied their wrapped in each other like two different colors of string twisted into an incomprehensible knot.

As he watched this Matsuda looked away into the distance, before suddenly remembering something. “Oh shoot, we left Naggy Naegi back at the hotel.”

Mukuro’s face became worried as she thought at one skinny boy who was not particularly good at fighting, but even so they had let Matsuda come along even though he was an equally skinny boy. She felt like a playground bully picking Makoto last for her kickball team.  
  
“Oh no he’s going to feel left out again!”


	25. Knocking on Heaven's Door

“...Prin...cess…”

Shiranui rose her head realizing she had been snatched away and was being carried on Medaka’s back. Her eyes trailed to the side and she saw next to them Kamukura was running carrying Komaeda. Komaeda had refused to let the other carry him on his back so Kamukura was forced to princess carry him.   
  
She decided to look away from that mess and look on ahead.  
  
“Shiranui! So you can talk! Good timing, we’re getting close to the jeep. You can drive it, right? I’m not of legal age to drive yet.”  
  
“This is what you’re worrying about right now?” Shiranui flawlessly deadpanned as if she was performing as a part of a comedy duo while running for her life.

“I need to go back to where anshin’in-san is, so head somewhere safe with everyone else!” Medaka spoke over her, not noticing her defeated tones. “We just need to make it to the jeep.”

“That’s what they say in horror movies before the car stops working, or the monster appears sitting in the backseat of the car.” Komaeda said from his dainty position in the princess hold.   
  
“Hey! Don’t just recklessly foreshadow like that, what kind of optimist are you?” Hinata’s voice climbed an octave in his frustration as the stress started to get to him.  
  
“No, it’s meaningless. You can’t defy her script.” Shiranui said as she clung to Medaka’s back.  
  
“!? I don’t think I understand what you’re saying but don’t worry! It’s okay Shiranui! Anshin’in-san should be buying us some time…”  
  
Shiranui’s gaze fell. “Yeah, you don’t understand. It’s like even in a situation like this you can’t possibly grasp that you might lose. What reckless hope.”

The moment they arrived at the foot of the jeep, Medaka saw a flash of reddish black hair. Her eyes widened in surprise as she looked at the familiar yellow ribbon that tied Ajimu Najimi’s hair back.  
  
“I really love setting up expectations, just to yank their chains. That’s what they call being a subversive author.”

While that kind of quip was not too far off from Ajimu’s usual banter, Medaka noticed right away that it was not the always calm, neutral and bemused tones of her friend and fellow classmate. Slowly that girl’s head swiveled around and she saw the heavily made up face of Enoshima Junko looking at her with a smile that showed all of her teeth ready to devour.  
  
She played with the dark hair hanging at her shoulders for a moment. “How do you feel about the wig? It was one of those last minute before the con flash cosplays, I think it needs a little work.”

“...”  
  
“I did it! I made a great joke that made everyone fall down! As I thought tactlessly mimicking and descereating the memory of a deceased old friend is a foolproof gag.”

‘“Good joke. Now here’s the punch line.”  Medaka the overly fight happy, enthusiastic girl suddenly spoke in a voice reminescent of Kamuura’s. Shiranui was dropped to the side and so was Zenkichi and she forgot about protecting anything, for want to destroy the person in front of her.  
  
“Don’t act so cool girlie. You can’t attack during a dialogue scene, that’s like attacking while the villain is powering up it’s against the rules.” Nisenoshima casually snapped her fingers, tossing the wig aside. Of course because she was imitating Junko so flawlessly she couldn’t pass up the chance to say “Wig.” as she tossed it at Kurokami.  
  
At that moment from above Iihiko appeared, moving faster than the Kurokami Phantom. He landed driving a kick hard into her back and then dismounted behind her, walking the rest of the way to return to the side of his princess.  
  
“You… moved faster than the Kurokami Phantom. How.” Medkaa said, caught off guard and standing in place as she watched Ihiko easily eclipse her like a shadow.  
  
“Isn’t it always like this? The villains of the net arc have to be exponentially stronger than the villains of the last arc to raise the threat level, ugh shonen is just so poorly written.” The Fake Junko was ecstatic as she sat their holding her face in her hands like an eager audience member.  
  
Medaka grit her teeth. It was all she could do to hold back a roar. She growled through those teeth instead, “You bastard, don’t… MESS WITH ME!”  
  
Clearly ta line she planned to stage a comeback from, but suddenly next to her Ihiko drove his fist into her shoulder, hard enough to dislodge the joint. She felt like a doll getting its limbs torn off. All she could do was watch in slowmotion as her body was thrown back by the force of the blow.

Immediately she wrapped both of her legs around the arm in a judo lock technique. She was lifted into the air by the man’s strength alone, even though there was nothing special looking about his body, like Kamukura he had the shape of some replaceable person that you could find anywhere. Yet even as she tightened her legs around him to break his shoulder his body did not move at all.  
  
“Impossible. Your shoulder is dislocated, I’ll show it to you out of kindness.” Iihiko spoke in an utterly indifferent voice.  
  
She shouted into the white mask covering half of his face. “Hmmph! A little kindness is a big bother! I can recover an injury of that level I just need three se-”

At that moment he threw her away letting her drop to the ground. She fell, not even able to finishher words her body twisted and mangled at the shoulder.  
  
“To be honest I don’t really get characters like you, Medaka-chan. They compared you to Enoshima Junko-chan but I don’t really see it, I’m not sure how I’d write you.” Smirking playfully, that fake girl Junko continued to watch in the background. “That’s why something like abnormal recovery shouldn’t be allowed in the rules of this story anymore.”  
  
“Trying to recover in three seconds, how are you even more ridiculously overpowered than I am?” Kamukura said, taking the world’s worst moment to feel inferior.  
  
Medaka was already up swinging with her other arm. She spun her entire body around to try to hook the masked man in front of her with her fist

He simply held a hand out and caught the fist, enclosing his fingers around it. All momentum seemed to stop the moment it connected. “To hit me with a smash shoulder, curious. How in the world were you able to raise your arm? Ah, I see. You spun your body sharply and had the centrifugal force flail your arm for you using the muscles right here.” He raised her by the hand he violently held onto, lifting her into the air pulling her shoulder past its dislocation, and then slammed his fist hard into the side of her body. His hand swung like a cold, clean blade of execution striking her again and again their as he heard her muscle fibers break.  
  
“God, how lame am I just sitting there and watching a girl get beaten up in front of me.” Izuru said as he finally put Komaeda down and stepped ahead of him.  
  
“Impassible. Allow me to introduce myself properly this time, I am Iihiko. The man who will kill you. Do you understand your situation, Kamukura Izuru?”  
  
“It would be really pathetic if you truly thought you could scare me with such talk. People live and die, that’s all, how boring.”As he spoke he turned his head and his body just enough to make his long black hair flare and cover his face except or one glowing eye. In that moment Kamukura seemed to disappear in shadow. In the next he was standing behind Iihiko. He reached forward with a phantom touch to paralyze Iihiko.  
  
His hand was blocked by  a short knife that Iihiko drew in a flash. A flash of light that illuminated shadow. The normally expressionless masked man smirked for the first time. “Stepping into the shadows and appearing behind someone, that’s Ninpo you’re using right there. It’s just a copy of a basic technique developed in a ninja village like this.”  
  
Kamukura was able in an instant to reverse the direction of his movements with his usual perfect control over his body, jumping backwards to face off the other. He raised a knife in the air he had managed to steal from the man’s hidden holsters with the skill of the Ultimate Pick pocket. However as they both pointed a blade at each other standing parallel to one another with barely an expression on either of their faces they looked like mirror images.  
  
The usually quiet Iihiko was the first one to speak up. “You haven’t changed. Nothing about you has changed at all, Kamukura.”  
  
“I haven’t changed? You’re sounding like you knew the past me, if that’s the case I’m really sorry about that.” Kamukura said.  
  
“You must have already figured it out by now since the time we last met. You’re not someone who thinks with his fists like Kurokami.”  
  
Kamukura saw that night had fallen and by standing in front of him near the edge of a cliff Iihiko was positioning himself right in front of the moon. Whoever these two were they seemed to have an obsession with symbolism. Iihiko’s mask, his orange hair tied back, his outfit with a high collar and a sash at his waste but otherwise looking like a traditional slimming suit like the kind that Izuru wore. There was something anachronistic about it, he looked like someone who did not belong in this age. His entire appearance, his movements, they all had a sort of artificiality about him like a clockwork doll, and the way he dressed up so eccentrically he looked like he was playing a part in a historical play.  
  
“Iihiko… that’s not your real name is it? You’re just a fake.” Kamukura deduced after staring at the man backlit by the moon for long enough.  
  
“Unfortanately, that is my real name now. I am different from you. I have changed.”

“Please be careful… Hinata-kun.” A weak voice whispered from behind him.

“His strength is probably on par with mine.” Kamukura straightened up once more, ready to fight the fake in front of him.  
  
“Undeniable. That’s quite funny. Our skills are on par? Of course they are.” He raised one of the guns at his side, and then tossed the entire handgun at Kamukura as he jumped back once more. “The gun will just jam so pardon me if I skip this step. Feel free to pick up whatever weapon you want to fight with, this is nothing more than a graveyard of fallen fakes just like us. ”

Kamukura looked around and saw the bump which they had driven over was nothing more than a freshly dug shallow grave. All around them there were bodies dug, some half buried with nothing more than a shovel of dirt thrown over them in a hurry. There were weapons ont he ground some of them even still being clutched by their users in the throes of death. The term ‘ninja graveyard’ came to mind and Kamukura could not believe a normal guy like him had somehow gotten himself into this situation straight out of a b action movie. “Is this place really a ninja village?”  
  
“Unnecessary. Read my mask, I am not a ninja.”

“Well I was just curious. There’s no need for that sass.” Kamukura pouted, as suddenly he increased in speed and swept across a number of bodies.  Suddenly in his hand was five throwing stars reflecting a tiny bit of light, he threw them forward at the man who had been following at him like a shadow jumping into the air as he did. “A contest of pure skill and discipline of the body. I like the sound of that.”

However, at that exact same time the man jumped in the exact same way. He threw the same amount of throwing stars and with his one red eye Kaukura predicted their path as they violently tore through the air. He rotated his entire body around to dodge them, and then landed with the skills of the Ultimate Gymnast.  
  
The two of them began racing around picking up more and more throwing stars, and hurriedly hurled them at one another. However, each one’s throwing speed and aim was such a perfect imitation that the stars kept hitting each other and knocking each other out of the air with loud clanging noises. The sparks from the metal on metal impact that were sent flying looked like a tiny fireworks show.  
  
Kamukura picked up two knives from the ground and then rushed forward into close range. The moment he pushed forward, at the same time Iihiko pulled backwards. It looked like an elegant dance between the two of them where neither could take the lead, as  dual handed Kamukura slashed forward in wide arcs only to see each time Iihiko weave and duck away from the blows while remaining on two feet only two steps ahead of him. Eventually their rhythmn was broken and Iihiko jumped away with a back flip.

“So you call yourself Kamukura now? Once, I had a different name and face before I was made into this.” Iihiko said from the safe distance he had jumped back to.  
  
“Then, you went through the same procedure that I did?” It was the only reason that Kamukura could deduce for Iihiko’s constant wearing of that half mask, ‘not-ninja’. It was to cover up the scars of the constant brain surgery that would be required to produce another empty vessel that could become someone like Kamukura.  
  
“It’s quite ironic. You are an excellent specimen. Even if you were the sole success Hope’s Peak managed to produce one mere prototype, that would be more than enough to make every sacrifice to create your existence worth it. Nonetheless, I do not feel that I can lose to you.” The moment he finished speaking he disappeared and reappeared centimeters away from Kamukura’s face. In that instant the two of them were even breathing the same air, he gazed into the expressionless mask that Iihiko was wearing and realized there was no diference between them his own face was an expressionless mask as well whether he left it covered or uncovered. “Because you are me.” A whisper only shared between the two of them.  
  
Kamukura jumped back with everything he had, his analysis predicting seven thousand different deaths for him being so close to this man and screaming at him to run away.

Iihiko continued speaking in dull tones. “I died once. Not physically but mentally died. But one person denied me that death - my current master.  And now I put all my soul into following her orders. For I am the only one who can understand what it’s like, to have your entire personality rewritten, while you are still aware, watching yourself disappear.”

“I suppose that explains why you would put up with listening to such an annoying person, doing a half rate Junko impression.” Hinata’s rudeness left Kamukura’s lips as he picked up two more knives from the ground once more.  
  
In a moment provoked by the insult Iihiko was upon him. The two of them exchanged a flurry of two hande, dual wielding blows. Each of them was perfectly in balance and in sync with the other and because of that neither gain nor lost ground. They fought with such energy that sparks flew again from the collision of metal, he heard the sound of metal scraping against metal repeatedly and felt himself being hollowed out by it.  
  
The two of them broke out into a run at the same time, and as they ran side by side tried again and again to swipe blows at one another. Each time one moved, the other would follow. They were like two lines that met up at tangent points, again, again, again, for a brief instant before separating as they both drew back sensing they might die.  
  
“Well, if you complain that you are me, then I am you. As we continue fighting, I may not defeat you, but I will not lose to you either. I already said. I wouldn’t lose to myself anymore.” Kamukura said as he traded blows again.  
  
“Possibly.” At that moment, Iihiko finally seized on an opening and the thin tight lines of his lip quirked upward into a smirk once more.  
  
Komaeda raced across the ground picking up and fumbling with the strange looking gun that Iihiko had discarded. The moment he spotted an instant that looked like Kamukura might lose, he became desperate to do something, anything, so he would not have to be nothing more than a useless bystander, a watcher who did nothing as someone was taken away in front of him yet again. He had reassured himself telling him that Kamukura was the strongest in the world, that nobody could defeat him, but that was no excuse for forcing him to fight all alone. “Hiiiiiinaaaataaaaaa-kuuuuuuuun!” Komaeda tossed the gun to him, it spun through the air and Kamukura caught it.  
  
That was a mistake.  
  
The moment Kamukura stopped to catch it, Iihiko disappeared in shadow. Kamukura felt a phantom touch brush against his hip, like he was being held his body lined up against another body, caressed in a dance for that one moment. Then his red eye rolled to its farthest corner slowly as he saw the image of the masked man appear in his peripheral vision.  
  
Their brief and bittersweet embrace was over. Kamukura looked into his empty hand and saw that the gun had been stolen away. Standing in front of him now, Iihiko completed the motion and Kamukura stared down the barrel.  
  
He heard his heart beat in his chest just loud enough to echo in his ears just once, as if a bolt of lightning had run through him reawakening his deadened nerve and causing the graverobbed dead heart of Frankenstein to beat once more in the corpse that it had been sewn into. Then, nothing, as a bullet pierced straight through his chest cutting his heart off after a single beat.  
  
Kamukura fell backwards suddenly losing all life from his body like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“Well then, that’s game over isn’t it.” Enoshima Junko crossed her legs, looking disinterested at the whole fight already. “That was a really boooooring struggle, like get over yourselves already. You really thought you were better than perfect Enoshima Junko-chan’s perfect plan.”  
  
Komaeda tried to say something but his throat scratched. He felt like he wanted to cry. He could not remember the last time he had wanted to cry so much. However as usual, he was deceiptful, completely untrue to those emotions. He gave a sickly smile turning his head to look back at her. Zenkichi was finished in an instant, Medaka was broken on the ground and Kamukura shot through the heart and all that was left was a person of no particular significance who just did not know his place. If that was his role though he had no choice but to play it. “That’s a terrible Enoshima-san impression you’re doing. You’re completely failing to capture the spirit of her character. If you have a talent it must not lie in imitating others.”

“Eeeeeeh, howso?”  
  
“There’s no way Junko would just let it end like this. She’d spend the next two hours explaining the entire plot to us, and rambling about despair. Which is completely different from rambling about hope for two hours by the way, as despair never amounts to anything simply serving as a stepping stone for-”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, we get it. Well I guess I can explain a little bit since. I wanted to get the timing of the big reveals down perfectly, pacing is just so tricky to nail but since you’re all going to forget anyway.” Junko’s fingers curled and scraped at her cheeks as she could barely hold back her excitement. She looked like somebody who had been waiting all of her life to tell the world’s greatest story, holding it inside of her all that time and now clawing at her own skin she wanted it free by any means necessary. “Iihiko, the slideshow I prepared!”

“Yes, princess.”  
  
In a few seconds that man disappeared and reappeared with a projector he was pushing on a cart. “I hope you’ll all forgive me for beating you up, I don’t like violence. I think television that relies on too much violence to get ratings is the worst kind. It’s just sometimes people won’t listen, so I have to use persuasion and slides.”  
  
She turned around and in an instant her appearance changed, her hair was tied back in one pony tail and she was wearing a pair of glasses. On the ground Medaka finally stirred. “Anshin’in-san, why did she have to…?”  
  
“She killed Junko-chan. Junko-chan may have been nothing but despair to all of you, but to me she was… the brightest of hopes…she was everything, everything, everything.” Suddenly, she wildly smacked both sides of her face. “Puhuhuuhuha! Did I say something sincere for a second there? My bad, my bad, I mistook this comedy for a drama. What’s more important is how I did it yes?” She clicked the button in her hand changing the slide.  
  
THe image of a terrible hulking giant with flaming hair and two pronounced horns on his head was projected onto the trees behind her.  
  
“Iihiko Shishime. Five thousand years ago he was a hero who was able to defeat AJimu Najimi, or so the legend goes. He was the first person ever to defeat her. That’s why Ajimu-san says that every thousand or so years a main character like entity exists that she cannot win against. Did we ever decide who the main character is this time around? I should decide that already since I’m the author.”  
  
“...That looks nothing like-”

The Iihiko standing in front of them was tall, thin and stocky with long limbs. His hair was the same color of orange, but it was pulled back not flowing like a mane.  
  
“Well of course this isn’t the same Iihiko, there’s no way a human could live for five thousand years. However, this village in particular the Shiranui village decided to preserve his legend. Legends are usually passed down by word of mouth, the telling and retelling of stories. However, in this village there was a particular method they used to preserve him. THey passed Iihiko’s memories from vessel to vessel. In the past it was a supernatural ceremony that was something like ghost possession, but I can’t have that kind of thing show up in a modern urban fantasy setting like this so I relied on technology instead.”  
  
She clicked the slides once more, changing to a side by side diagram comparing the Flask Plan and the Kamukura project.  
  
“So, I stole the results from the two prototype projects running parallel. We call this plagiarism in the writing business. WIth all that research data, I inserted it into my Junko brain, and improved it, because everything naturally gets better with my involvement. After Junkifying the project, I was able to use the same procedure from the Kamukura project to make a perfect recreation of the original Iihiko and the result is uhhh… what’shisname over there.”  
  
She gestured vaguely over to Iihiko who was standing in attention at her side. He bowed his head to her, but all she did was look away in disinterest. She clicked again to change to a slide of godzilla fighting king kong.  
  
“Now, as to how he was able to defeat Ajimu not only was he able to do so in the original myth, but also it has to do with the myth arc of this world. The more a story is repeated the stronger it becomes, right? Iihiko is a story that has been preserved for five thousand years and in comparison Ajimu is one of those modern, subversion of a trope characters that’s been popping up in recent years. Things like teenagers with superpowers, that’s all too recent don’t you think? Iihiko’s legend is stronger. Who would win in a fight between godzilla and king kong, wouldn’t the answer just be whichever character is more popular. He’s a character of a different story, to him things like skills are just an annoyance they’re all neutralized around him.”

Medaka turned her head, looking at the shallow graves all around her. “So… you used such a person to kill Shiranui’s home town? Why…? To send my friend into despair?”  
  
It was not a bad guess, considering that she was currently walking around, and talking like Enoshima Junko. However fake Junko quickly waved her hand in front of her face. “Nonononono, nothing like that. You see it was decided by this village that your beloved friend was going to be the one who had her personality rewritten in order to become the next Iihiko. Your so-called friend was going to disappear without you noticing. Then, I, oh so nobly massacred everyone to save her! Go me! Junko Wins!”  
  
She jumped up miming a pair of pom poms as if she was putting on a cheer. “Your friend only ever helped you from the start and you never once questioned it, you assumed it was natural for her to play a supporting role in your life you damn main character. The one who helped her was me, the one who freed her was me…”

She folded her hands behind her back, kicking over the projector and walking away with disinterest. “You can only find your true self if you interact with others. Is that the lesson here? What a terrible lesson. All others give you is expectations for what roles to play. I’m no different, he’s no different, she’s no different, everyone in the whole world is just playing a role, from minute, to minute, to minute, they only ever do what others expect of them.”  
  
She immediately turned to point out Komaeda and Kamukura. “Look at those two, they’re trying to find themselves in each other, how close they are, how romantic, gag! It’s all a big fat lie! They don’t understand each other, they don’t understand themselves, they’re just self obsessed.”  
  
Her head turned away from the little blue haired girl on the ground, the fake Junko called out to her. “Hansode. Come with me. They’ll just force you to go back to playing ‘the role’ of their friend. Also, they smell. And they’re lame.”  
  
Shiranui opened her mouth but was unable to answer.  
  
Kurokami Medaka spoke first. “Shiranui, you’ve always been like that. Always, always, like that. You’ve killed your own feelings. You’ve killed yourself and supported me. If you want to become my enemy acting on your own feelings, that’s fine. I’ll accept that. Thank you, I love you, I love you, Shiranui.”

“...Princess…” Shiranui hesitated. However what rose on her face was not the true feelings of one’s heart being reached but rather, a look of scorn and mockery. “Aaaaaaaaahhhh! Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Ahhhhhyayayaya! Aaaaaaah, I’m so glad I got to meet somebody like you. You’re always so straight and true, deceitless, that’s why you can trust a world like this. I’ve… hated you for so long.”  
  
She finally stood up, and danced that tiny body of hers over the fake Junko’s side.  
  
“Shiranui, even if you hate me that’s-” Medaka kept reaching out for her.  
  
“I especially hate that attitude of yours, that would accept even a person like me. It’s too heavy, it’s going to crush me, I’m a tiny girl you know.” SHiranui said as he held her hand out for Junko to take.  
  
“Well, it seems like that’s decided. Odd Komaeda didn’t speak up at all during the scene where we were talking about despair, hey you-” She immediately threw the remote she was holding beaning Komaeda in the head with it as she saw him trying to load Kamukura in the jeep to make a getaway. “You’d really abandon all of them just to try to ensure Kamukura-senpai’s safety? Is he the only one that matters to you?”

Before either of them could react Medaka had already stood up as well dragging Zenkichi into the jeep. “That’s fine, the one who should protect Zenkichi is me after all. Though, if skills don’t work on Iihiko we’re runnin out of options. Do you have any ideas?”  
  
Komaeda looked back to her. “There’s nothing left we can try? There… it has to be there, there's always hope, always, always, always, because hope is in everything…hope is in everything.” His last attempt at a distraction had failed. As Kamukura’s life seemed to be fading so too did  
  
Kamukura’s single eye opened. It was a green eye. “How uncool. There’s no way I’d let Komaeda of all people save me.”  
  
“Hey… I was trying my best.” Komaeda wined in the background.  
  
“What is there left to us. I know! We have the power of imagination!” Medaka said, straining the hardest to be optimistic.  
  
“Umm… I’m sorry to be cynical and put down the ideas of a talented person but yeah, I don’t think that will help much.” Komaeda said looking to the side.  
  
“Then all that’s left is relying on a boring talent like luck.” Hinata sighed, only gazing through one eye.  
  
“That’s right Komaeda is lucky! Rub rub rub rub rub rub rub rub rub him for luck!” Medaka became increasingly desperate.  
  
“Hey, go rub your own boyfriend! You’re engaged!” Hinata snapped back at him. He realized though that there was no way forward in this situation, even if they tried to drive away the fake Junko would see through them. “You’re right! I haven’t changed! I’m not Izuru Kamukura, I’m still Hajime HInata-kun, a dumbass who will risk everything on the line attempting to look cool and be the center of attention.” He said as he kicked the gear into reverse and then slammed the petal down with the last of the strength in his body. Just then the car reversed off of a cliff and tumbled into the sheer drop that would lead to he brush several stories below.  
  
Hinata had decided to rely on luck. Dumb luck.  
Because though this would probably be impossible for him to ever articulate properly, he still considered meeting Komaeda Nagito to be a stroke of good luck no matter what consequences were to follow from meeting that boy.  
  
A once in a lifetime fateful encounter. In one life, he was so fortunate then to have died and reborn because it meant he got to meet such a boy in two different lifetimes. The jeep fell away from the four of them, and the four of them fell apart but even as that happened Hinata smiled because he had absolute unshakable faith that even if he died, the next version of him would still meet Komaeda again.

At that moment what stopped the Ihiko and Junko from pursuing was just another stroke of luck. Right at that moment, lightning struck Iihiko and he pushed unko out of the way.  
  
“Ehhhh? Who gave you permission to touch me ugly.” She called out at Iihiko before standing up herself and dusting off her black and red outfit. “Who’s this?”  
  
“Mesmerizing isn’t it? The electric shock I’m putting out.” A man dressed in all black, black shoes, a black leather jacket, and with spiked golden hair that seemed to be kept up by the static electricity he emitted walked forward. “Who am I? Unortantaely, right now I’m not anyone. It’s too presumptuous of me to name myself even when asked. It’s just a regular me, passing by.”  
  
“Miyakonoujo Oudo? I didn’t know you were in this fic! My, my, my, what gilgamesh level condescension you have, interrupting my important villain scenes.”  
  
As his fingers sparked he stood up, proud. “Gilgamesh? Gilgamesh? He wishes he were me! I’ll even condescend to him. This regular me, would like to introduce some abnormal friends.” He said as he laid a hand on a boy with white hair and a mask who was much shorter than he was.  
  
“I see, I see. You know I was really only interested in the Dangan Ronpa characters, but since you Medaka Box losers keep getting in my way I might as well make this a crossover.” Junko said, a smile spreading on her lips as she prepared to watch the inevitable unfold in front of her once again.

😈

 

While he was asleep Hinata dreamed.  
He dreamed he was on an isalnd and he wanted to return home, but there was a great ocean expanding in front of him. The island was completely empty, nothin but sand. He could build a sand castle if he wanted to make a metaphor about that but he could not build a single thing from this island. He needed to cross the ocean all on his own.  
  
He jumped into the water and began to swim. At first swimming was easy, but as he got farther and farther away from the island he still did not see a destination in sight. His body grew heavy, and he felt like there was a current under the water dragging him down. Perhaps he just imagined there was a current though, because he had gotten tired of the repetitive action of swimming. He hated putting in all of his effort only to see nothing more than a blue expanse in front of him never shrinking, only reminding him of how tiny and insignificant it was. Yet he could not bring himself to stop swimming, and so slowly he started to wish to drown as an escape. Eventually, he was pulled under, he was subsumed and crushed by the massive weight of the ocean. The moment he was dragged under, he felt himself being crushed by that weight on every part of his body only to suddenly wake up again on the beach. When he looked into the water a different face was looking back at him. He looked out at the water to see that there was a body floating amidst the waves. His old body, was floating there bobbing up and down. He had forgotten how tiresome it was to swim and jumped into the water again. Just like last time he swim until merely the idea of swimming on and one forever was tiring for him, and then rather than give up he waited to down.

Then he woke up on the shore once more, the waves washing over his face. The salt stung his eyes. They started to water but he did not cry because there was no one there to shed tears over. He sat up once more and in the water in front of him there were two bodies floating there, they bobbed helplessly on the waves. He jumpedinto the water and tried to swim to one of them only for the waves to carry it away faster than he could swim. He got the sense that no matter how much he swam towards it he would never reach it, that him had gone to some far off place. It was gone, and yet it was right in front of him, looking at him while being just out of reach.  
  
He tried to swim to escape the island, knowing that this time he had a different face, a different body, and yet swimming because just as hard for him. Every time he was reborn he was sure he made it farther and yet at the same time he did not feel like it made a difference at all. The place that he was swimming was so out of reach.  
  
Eventually it reached a point where he stopped even bothering to look at the water and see what new face he was wearing this time. He threw himself right into the water and swam forward without talking. Then soon, before he knew it, the water in front of him was filled with floating corpses all of which were him, and he had forgotten which face he was even wearing at the moment.

 _You haven’t changed. Nothing about you has changed at all._ The voice echoed in his ears.  
  
But he was trying his best to change. He was giving it everything he had. How many times had he drowned in these waters, only to throw himself right in and start swimming again. Sooner or later he was going to forget that he had ever had a container called a body to begin with. He would lose all of his shape, and become a liquid indistinguishable from the water itself.  
  
Until that happened he wanted to keep trying at least, he wanted to keep going forward even if every subsequent attempt made him a lesser and lesser version of himself. He stared at himself, the floating hims in the water, the corpses he had left behind. He took a step. He was Hajime Hinata and then he died. He took another step he was Izuru Kamukura then he died. He took a third step he was the Ultimate ???? then he died. He took a fourth step, who was he now? He was trying his best to gather up all the different parts into a whole and hold it all to his chest to not let a single part of himself escape but it was liquid and it fell through the gaps in his fingers.  
  
Hinata Izuru woke suddenly. He heard the sound of falling water in the distance, and saw a mist rising through the air and was immediately reminded of his dream. Before he could close his eyes though he saw something that made him want to keep his eyes open.  
  
“Finding an oasis in this forest in the middle of nowhere, after falling off a cliff in that truck, my luck is the stuff of legends.”

 _I want to see a desire,_ _  
_ _Glistening more than anyone else._

His voice was softly humming the words to an old familiar song, it was carried just over the sounds of water falling. Hinata looked down and saw the clothes Komaeda had left behind were neatly folded just on the shore. There were still twigs and leaves stuck in a few of them. His eyes trailed up slowly and he saw Komaeda’s pale body, made even paler by the moonlight. Not a lot of time must have passed since they fell. The low light of stars in the sky was reflecting off the surface of the water, Komaeda stood pale and naked washing himself off in a waterfall. Kamukura could not tell who was glistening more, the water itself, the stars, the soft light of the moon, or Komaeda’s body.

No he already knew, the natural scenery even a spring in the middle of a forest, even an oasis that showed the beauty and bounty of nature, it meant nothing to his eyes that dismissed everything in front of them as dull. The scenery of him was only beautiful because Komaeda was in it, nature’s beauty was just a mere backdrop to highlight that boy’s beautiful and strange uniqueness, because he looked like something completely outside of nature, no somebody who did not belong in this world at all. The stars, the moon reflecting light, they all existed as a spotlight to highlight Komaeda’s presence here.  
  
It was like a unique once in a lifetime even. Hinata was afraid if he blinked the boy in front of him might disappear. Just like a ghost, or a momentary mirage one sees at the brink of dying of thirst in the desert. In fact consider this entire scene to be Hinata dying of thirst, there’s your obligatory Yasuke interruption, back to narration.  
  
He watched the water fall from the spring above, crashing onto Komaeda’s body as he bathed underneath it, pulling his hair down.His colorless hair was even longer now, almost reaching his shoulders, the way it curled made the boy look like his head was framed by clouds.  The waterdroplets fell down his body. They pooled at his collar bone whose edges were apparent underneath his pale skin. A few fell down his spine, and watching their path down made Kamukura feel a tingle in his own back. There was a gentle slope to Komaeda’s body, it was so elegant in its construction. It looked fragile, and yet there was a beauty in its fragility. Sparkling, sparkling, sparkling, he was like a glass container filled up with something that Hinata could not comprehend he just knew he was lacking in it.

Fragility. It was because of that fragile nature, that Komaeda was distant from everyone. He was such a cold person, and had such lonely eyes, but even still from so far away Hinata could see that there was still a speck of love and devotion in them. That was why Hinata was drawn to him, he wanted to protect even those glassy eyes, it seemed the world existed only to break things, to dirty meanings, so he wondered if it was alright for him to caress and hold onto this one fragile existence.

That was right as he watched water fall down to the curves of his hips, the pronounced structure of bone that made him thin and curved at the same time. The neat way the lines of his body came together and dipped down below the hips. His eyes gently traced over all of it, with a simple wish to embrace that person in front of him. _  
_ _  
_ _I love, and want to understand_ _  
_ _Him more than anyone else._ _  
_ _More, more than anyone else._

As Komaeda finished his lyrical couplet, Hinata considered taking a step in the water to join him. However the moment he reached the edge of the water he saw his own face looking back at him and hesitated. It was Izuru Kamukura’s body exactly, his hair was even messier than before from the fall and the only difference was the color of one eye had changed.

Perhaps he should have cut all of his hair off and tried to look more like Hajime. He thought about it once, holding scissors gingerly in his hand as he stared at his own reflection but it made him realize that even if he changed the outside, he would still feel like Kamukura, that empty, shadow of a person on the inside. It made him not want to do anything, so he let his hair grow longer, and forgot about taking care of himself throwing himself into his work instead.

Sitting at the edge of the water, Hinata’s large adult looking body became oddly child like as he curled his knees up and looped his arms around them. “Hey… Nagito. Why do you always call me Hinata-kun?”  
  
His name was Kamukura when they first met. His name was only Hinata the next time. Komaeda had never even encountered him as Hinata, the normal boy of little consequence.

“Because unlike you I’m not a rude boy who calls others by name without honorifics without permission and then peeps on them when they’re showering.”  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that. Besides you’re the one who suddenly got naked and started wiggling that thing in my face and singing the moment I woke up. You showing off, huh, huh?” The reply came so fast Hinata could not believe his usually dull voice was speaking it.

“There’s absolutely nothing for me to show off. My body is so not worth looking at that I’m practically invisible. I assumed that if I stripped naked you’d just look away in disinterest so I’d be safe.” Komaeda said as he twisted up his long and spindly fingers in his hair, looping them around like spools of thread. “I just underestimated how much of a creep you are, that you’d even stare at a person like me.”

“I ain’t a creep. The one who randomly gets naked in front of others is the creep!”

“You’re right, it’s really creepy of me to show off my ugly body in front of you. I apologize. You must have been so scared, thinking a ghost, or some pale monster from a horror story was in front of you.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant at all! Ugh, nothing goes right.” Hinata said as he fell backwards letting his limbs fall loosely at his sides.  
  
“That’s just probably because I’m here, Hinata-kun.” Komaeda said, turning his head away so his face could not be seen.  
  
Hinata felt sad about that too, because Komaeda had such a pretty face. Not in a conventional way. Some would say that he looked like a skull whose skin had been wallpapered over it, and perhaps they were not wrong but, the high cheeks, the slope where  his face became shallow before eventually meeting the curve of his chin, the way his eyes were sunken in and always tired looking it was cute. Cute like a pandas eyes. When Hinata compared people to bears it was much cuter than when Junko did it, source: Yasuke’s spite.  
  
“No, it’s not. I like that you’re here. I’m glad you’re here.”  Hinata spoke from the heart.  
  
“What a dumb thing to say. Hinata-kun, your Hinata side is showing.”  And Komaeda istantly rejected those words from the heart. Ugh, so difficult.

“I’m not a good leader, am I? Please just tell me. Be brutally honest like usual. Everything went wrong there and there was nothing I could do about it. Was I being too much like Kamukura, or being too much like Hinata…” Hinata muttered, clutching his face as he did.  
  
When he looked up Komaeda was suddenly standing over him. His face took up his whole perspective of the world. His eyes looked down for a moment until he saw what the lines that dipped down from Komaeda’s hips were pointing at and then shot right back up. Komaeda did not even seem to realize how close they had become, he spoke directly as usual, except when he spoke indirectly but that was usual for him as well. “You’re always so quick to dismiss your self-worth.”  
  
“Because I have nothing.” Hinata said back in a dull voice.  
  
“Aren’t you just being greedy? Isn’t the being the biggest hope, and having every talent enough for you?” Komaeda said a very unkomaeda-like thing. Probably because he was speaking to Hinata, he was addressing him as a person. He wasn’t trying to preach or speak of ideals.  
  
“That’s so unlike you. Since when did you think there was such a thing as enough hope? Hope should just get stronger and stronger right?”

“I guess I’m not myself when I’m around you.” Komaeda said. It was a statement that made him seem more naked and shivering then stripping off his clothes and washing himself in water. “I become a different person, or more like, I become more me and that’s scary because I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin.”

Kamukura thought of what those two strange enemies had lectured them about. Pitch black, and pure white, right now the boy dressed in all black and dripping in shadows, and the boy pure and naked standing over him in pale skin, they looked like nothing more than a contrast. He was completely unable to see the similiarities between the two of them, but then had it not always been like that? When he was just a brown haired boy who could be substituted for any other person in the world and Komaeda was a white haired boy who did not look like anyone else, who barely looked like he belonged in this world. It was always Komaeda who insistied on their similarity, and it was Hinata who denied it.

 _I never understood you back then, not even once._ _  
_ _When you said ‘we’re the same’ was that true or did you just want me to think that way so I would try to understand you._ _  
_ _So there was somebody in this world who would try to understand you._ _  
_ _So you’re less alone._

Tsumugi accused them of not understanding each other at all. Of not being alike. Of saying it was impossible. Would their relationship always be like that, just push and pull continually without making any progress at all.  
  
“Anshin’in-san is dead. I’ll have to tell Kumagawa-senpai that I walked right into the trap that killed her. I wasn’t good enough.” Hinata said.  
  
“My, my, if Mr. Hero with every single power wasn’t good enough than what does that say about trash like me? When you put yourself down don’t you know you’re basically shoving me into the center of the earth by comparison.”  
  
“Not everything is about you, Komaeda.”

“I know, I know, I actually have nothing to do with this. Even Hitoyoshi-kun tried to do something, I just sat and watched. One wonders how a piece of trash like me could get such an ego about him.”  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that I just… I wasn’t talking about you.” Perhaps though, if Kamukura talked about himself he was talking about Komaeda in a way, they were connected like that. They had become so close as if to overlap, any movement he made Komaeda would make another one. He was like an image in an inverted mirror, but a mirror was simply a projection there was nobody controlling it, except in this one occasion where there was somebody behind the glass deliberately deciding to mimic him.  
  
“I know. You’re sad aren’t you? And it has nothing to do with an insignificant person like me, and there’s nothing I can do for you, but because I’m so egotistical I can’t help but think.” As Hinata sat up again, Komaeda stepped back at exactly the same pace as if there was a line he was afraid to cross. “I want to comfort you.”  
  
Hinata stood up on his own though. He stood with his hands hanging on his side. Almost to show that he could still stand up, resolute, alone, a solitary entity, just like that even with the world on his shoulders. He was the world’s hope after all, it was time he lived up to the title. He still had so much he needed to make up for, so many people he had killed just to continue living as… this person… this thing… he needed to keep apologizing again and again for his own existence. There was no way he could be tripped up so early. “No, you’re right. I was just whining. We should go…” _I’m the one who should be comforting you anyway._

Komaeda stood up with him at the same time, but a step away, behind a line. He looked down at the imaginary line on the ground for a moment, contemplating. That one single step to cross the boundary seemed to take everything out of him. He brought his arms up and then froze. His fingers reached out to try to close the tiny gap between him and Hinata’s arms, and then they shook. He repositioned his hands again wondering if that would be better, but he still froze right before. The words _how do hug???_ Ran through Komaeda’s mind at the moment. He realized he might not have ever thrown his arms around Hinata once before this, that he always relied upon Hinata to embrace him. That felt a little sad. He knew what it was like never being hugged before, he was probably just making Hinata feel bad because of his own inexperience.  
  
With things like hugs, touching, being close, he still had no idea at all. Nobody had shown it to him, he had only watched from far away.  
  
_Maybe I can learn._ He thought as suddenly Hinata’s body gave up trying to stand on his own, and crashed onto his like a wave. Komaeda was not so much hugging him at that point as catching him. Hinata stayed silent, he noticed, that even though he could easily annoy Hinata to the point where he tsukkomi’d on reflex, when Hinata was serious he became completely silent and withdrawn like Kamukura.

His shaking hands patted Hinata’s broad back. He was doing this whole comfort thing wrong he was sure. Hinata was still wearing his clothes and they became wet as he pressed himself against the boy. The weight of someone even a small existence like Komaeda leaning against him became too much and both boys fell backwards.  
  
“Ah, sorry I ruined your clothes. Let me take care of that for you.” Komaeda sat up. His fingers still trembling reached out for Izuru’s suit buttons. He undid them one by one. Hinata only watched with fascinated eyes.  
  
The moment they were unbuttoned Hinata sat off, and shrugged off the jacket in one flawless motion. Everything he did look so deliberate, so masterfully done, whereas Komaeda was so fumbling and clumsy. Komaeda would never guess that the silent Izuru actually heard the equivalent of two voices worth of screaming inside of his own head right now. Conversing like this. _Wait this is really happening? This is really happening right now? This is really happening?_  
  
Obviously, Kamukura inherited his smooth moves from his love life from his creator good old Matsuda. That was a joke there’s nothing good about me and my love life is a mess.  
  
Komaeda did not bother with the same neat undressing with his button up white shirt. He just grabbd the ends and pulled it apart until the buttons popped. He placed his palm against the boy’s stomach muscles. “Such good muscles, such high quality meat.”  
  
“You sound like you’re going to eat me.”  
  
“I just might.” A nasty smirk appeared on Komaeda’s face in that moment. Komaeda looked down and saw as he rubbed against Kamukura’s lower half there was still a tight barrier of cloth in between them preventing them from getting close. In the triangle of his pelvis there was something that made the cloth look even tighter. Komaeda pressed his palm against it wondering if he could make someone as still and strong looking as Kamukura shudder. “Really Hinata-kun you’re so excited looking. DId something nice happen to you or something?”  
  
Kamukura locked his teeth together to prevent anything from escaping and spoke through gritted teeth. “Where did you hear that?”  
  
“It’s just something Kumagawa-kun says sometimes.”  
  
“Please don’t mention Kumagawa-senpai’s name while we’re doing this.”  
  
“Doing what?” Komaeda asked, and then stroked with his hand gently through the barrier of his pants. “You know Kumagawa-kun and I have similiar voices, and builds I bet if you closed your eyes you might picture him.”  
  
“Don’t say that while rubbing me!”

“Rub, rub, do you think I can rub this for good luck?”  
  
“You’re despicable, the absolute worst.”  
  
“I know.” He said with a knowing smile as finally he hooked his fingers around the edges of his waistline and started to yank down. A few more times, pants and boxers at the same time. He did not even bother to pull them all the way off and instead they just sat hanging off of Hinata’s knees because Komaeda was impatient.

“Wait, we don’t have-” Hinata started.  
  
“Yeah, in my jacket.”  
  
“Why do you carry that stuff around?”  
  
“I thought we were going to take a trip and then stay in a hotel overnight.”  
  
Hinata gasped. “You were going to seduce me.” He looked like an innocent maiden.  
  
Fumbling, fumbling, unworthy of what he was touching, human hands desecrating beautiful marvel the idolatry of the gods, he pushed Kamukura backwards partially into the water and his hands moved to spread apart his thighs. He traced out every detail fo Kamukura’s body that was carved into stone. The small bumps of his ribs, the muscles of his stomach, the muscles of his legs that were pulled tight, even like this he was so tense.  
  
This, this, what was this? Supplication? Worship of the gods? Some holy thing? Perhaps he was trying to wash something away both of them half submerged into the water like this. A private spring. A private oasis. A place for the two of them. Their own little world. He had wished it could just be the two of them, a world made up of just the two of them him and the only boy that ever tried to understand him but he knew that was wrong because Kamukura might get lonely otherwise. Komaeda knew there was no chance for him, but he wished Kamukura might find something beautiful about this world. A world Komaeda was sure was made up of beautiful places, and beautiful people, even if he had yet to witness them, being so cut off from others and exposed to their ugliness as he was. He wanted Kamukura to keep witnessing that world forever, to look at that world instead of him, because Komaeda knew with great certainty he would not b able to be a part of it for long.  
  
That was why even this was selfish. Wanting to dwell in one another’s secret gardens, their private oasis, it wasn’t anything special. In fact the world consisted of only the two of them from the beginning. Thy had only seen the world through their own perspectives, they had stayed entirely inside of themselves in their own gardens. He felt like he was defiling it, like a snake sneaking in, like he had already eaten the fruit and started to caress the naked body in front of him in a dirty and embarrassing way. If that was the case he hoped the water would wash him away.  
  
One day he knew he would disapepar for sure, every day he spent clinging to Kamukura before that fact, that was just his own selfishness, his own self importance. When that day finally came he wished he would wash away like water, and leave no trace of himself on Kamukura’s life. His hips settled finally, as he arranged himself settling his weight on Hinata’s crotch.  
  
The water from the spring, rose and crashed against the edges of their bodies but Komaeda was mimicking the motion so well tat he did not even notice it. He kept going, again and again with a determined rhythm. That was just his own indulgence, but he wanted to see that stone like face of Kamukura’s crack if only a little bit. He was not even thinking of his own pleasure, only an afterthought.

To keep going and going, until the point where he could make Kamukura see every color at once. The same way that when they had first met, he saw so many colors, and then felt the rush of them all coursing through him at one, with so much energy he could feel his heart beating in his ears. To feel all the colors, he just wanted to make Hinata feel that and then… and then… If he could lay by his side and see those same colors, to share that sight, that moment with him, that would b nice too he supposed.

Kamukura was nothing more than an empty vessel. He felt liquids of every color being poured into to him at once, and for a moment he could feel all of those, every single one, glistening, glistening, glistening, and then the glass shattered around him. Komaeda collapsed on top of him. Unfair, Hinata thought as he stroked the boys back. He was the one who felt like collapsing.  
  
Every time he felt anything at all it all went away so quickly. He was sure Komaeda felt the same way, but for Komaeda it was taken, and for Hinata it was lost to entropy. He wondered if there was any worth in trying so hard to feel attachment for a single moment if it was all going to go away anyway.  
  
He did not think too hard about it though, because he found it really hard to keep thinking as he usually did at the moment. Komaeda pressed his mouth against his ear, speaking through his damp hair. “Was I useful to you?”  
  
Kamukura looked up and say that their hair had became tangled together, it was a mess of black and white, a knot where it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended despite of their distinct coloring.  
  
“Don’t say that, you’re making it sound like I’m just using you.”  
  
“What if I want to be used by you.”  
  
“Weirdo. Keep your weird fetishes away from you.”  
  
“I want to be needed.”  
  
Probably because he was on an emotional high, Komaeda was able to make such a stark confession, stark naked, the kind of naked that was embarrassing to be even in front of a lover.

“You don’t need to be needed by others to be here. What if I want you here?”

“You’re the only one.” Komaeda said, his voice falling to a whisper. “Bad taste.”

He wanted to be wanted  and not needed. Really, it was confusing, really really so confusing. Trying to swim an entire ocean was less tiring than this, trying to navigate this maze of thorns. Some of them were on accident, and sometimes Komaeda pricked him on purpose just to see the face he would make. Tired, so tiring he wanted to take a nap, but he didn’t hate it. It was the first good effort he had made in his life. He felt a little different from the boy who whined about not having a talent but did not make any effort to try and better himself and relied on a magical surgery to fill him up his empty glass jar self with all kinds of magic potions instead.  
  
“It’s hard…”  
  
“Still?”  
  
“I don’t mean that!” Hinata snapped back at Komaeda, tsukkomi’ing on reflex. “It’s hard, I’m trying so hard to change, but I can’t stop ever trying… and nobody sees how hard I’m trying.. And I can’t complain either because I’m a terrible person who should change.” The words came spilling out of him at once.  
  
Komaeda recognized those words spilling out of his mouth, like he was vomitting up kanji that he had hidden inside of him and swallowed over and over again like black ink up until this point. Those were words that would be no strangers in Komaeda’s mouth.  
  
Yeah, they really were similiar. He was sure of it. Junko was wrong, she was just lying. Even if it was only for a oment, even if they would fight again later, they could get closer, they culd see each other.  
  
“I know, you’re trying oh so hard my hero boy. I can see it if everybody else can.”  
  
“You’re watching me?”  
  
“I’m a fan of talent after all.”  
  
Hinata hid his face in Komaeda’s shoulder. “Don’t make it sound like you’re stalking me.”

😈

 

When he woke up in the morning, Hinata had felt so much emotion he woke up with a headache that constituted a hangover from falling back down into his usual feeling nothing. He looked down to see Komaeda’s head resting against his chest, using him as a pillow. H wantd to preserve the quiet tranquility of the scene.  
  
Unfortunately, his Tsukkomi reflex kicked in. “I can’t believe we almost died, and Medaka-chan and Zenkichi could be dead and literally the only thing we’ve done so far was have sex! We are literally the worst at this, I hate us!”  
  
Komaeda woke up. “Mmm, Hinata-kun you’re the one who fell asleep. After I worked so hard to bandage your wounds and everything.”  
  
A moment later they were dressed, though Hinata threw his button up shirt away and instead wore his bandaged chest out with the jacket of his suit hanging loosely at his shoulders. As they walked back into the forest, Hinata offered his hand to Komaeda, but Komaeda did not take it stepping ahead and quickening his pace instead.  
  
“Hey.” Hinata grumbled after him.  
  
“You have the talent of the ultimate survivalist, and the ultimate cartographer, do you really need me to hold your hand?” Komaeda said with his head turned away.  
  
“That was for your sake! I was looking out for you! If I don’t tie you down you’re just going to wander away like a cat again.”  
  
“The Ultimate hope was looking out for me of all people. How kind. How generous of him.”

Every time they got close they ended up distancing themselves again. They were inconsistent people, but at least they had that consistent pattern.  
  
Ater they began to walk for awhile, Komaeda looked like he was trying to think of how to say something in a sensitive way. It was a definite effort, a struggle for him, and then he just gave up and said it. “Are you being defective or something? Are you glitching? We’re totally lost.”  
  
“We’re not lost! It’s like you said I have the talents to navigate us, and like you should be calling someone defective.”  
  
“Such a rude boy Hinata. You shouldn’t call somebody with brain damage like me defective. You’re being insensitive.”

“You just called me defective, just now! Don’t insult people if you don’t want to get insulted back.” Hinata snapped at him.

 _We’re both like that. You see me as more complete than you but that’s wrong, that’s always been wrong we’re both broken. Maybe I’m not broken as bad as you but that doesn’t matter._  
  
“I didn’t know you were so sensitive that even somebody as low as me could insult you.”  
  
“Don’t try insulting yourself to get out of it, I know that’s your favorite strategy!” Hinata snapped back at him again.  
  
“Strategy? Please, my brain is far too broken to think ahead of time, and plan anything, and if I did my luck would ruin it anyway. There’s no way an insignificant person like me could possibly affect the outcome of situations.”  
  
“If you think you couldn’t possibly know better than me why are you lecturing me about being lost?”

“Umm… because we’re lost? That’s why I said we’re lost. Are you stupid or something?”  
  
“You’re the one always saying stupid things. We’re not lost!” They might have in fact been lost, Hinata thought to himself, but now he was not going to admit it just to spite Komaeda. He looked at the boy walking in front of him, glasses covering his eyes, his hair long and messy, and then looked away finding it frustrating he found such a smug face so cute.  
  
The two of them kept walking like this, maintaining the distance between each other and then suddenly they found themselves exactly where they had started out. Komaeda sighed. “Jeez, Hinata-kun, all those talents sure are wasted on someone like you.”  
  
“If you think you can do so much better than find your own way out of the forest!” Hinata snapped at him and started walking off in the other direction. He never wanted to be apart from Komaeda, he had one small wish to let that fragile boy keep walking by his side, to be strong enough so they nothing could take him away, but at this moment he didn’t care if Komaeda got lost in the woods and a bear ate him. Spite was a powerful emotion, source: Matsuda.

After what seemed like hours of walking through the dense wood, both boys found each other again in front of the exact same spring, face to face. ‘Haha see! You got lost too!” Hinata pointed out right away, rudely pointing at the boy.  
  
“It’s rude to point you know, and besides I’ve always been a lost child. How mean of you to point that out.”  
  
“Don’t get all poetic to avoid the consequences of your actions.” Hinata stomped his feet to close the distance in between them. However when they got close and he stared into the details of Komaeda’s face and Komaeda staring back at him he suddenly lost his train of thought. Sheepishly, he tucked one of his long, black locks behind his ear. “D-do you think I should get my hair cut?”  
  
“I don’t know, you possess the skills of the ultimate cosmetologist not me.”  
  
“I’m asking you, because I want to know what you think.” Hinata pronounced think with emphasis.  
  
“Can’t think. Brain too broke.”

“You think all the time you just don’t ever want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”  
  
“You’re the one who doesn’t want to admit he needs help.” Komaeda finally snapped back. Hinata almost felt glad he was able to crack that boy’s perpetual smile even if it was in anger.  
  
“Maybe because every time I try to admit it you get all snippy with me.”  
  
“I’m not getting snippy, I just have a bad personality, and can’t talk with others at all.”  
  
“Don’t pretend to be self aware as an excuse either.” Hinata snapped at him again. “Why are you acting like this do you got a grudge against me?”  
  
“There’s no way somebody like me could possibly hold a grudge, I deserve what I get.”  
  
“Liar.”  
  
“I just don’t want to talk to someone who just decides everything on his own. It’s pointless, you won’t even listen to me.”  
  
“So you do have a grudge against me!” Hinata actually felt his voice raise.  
  
“It’s your fault, you’re supposed to be the normal one between the two of us.”  
  
“Literally how is anything about me normal! Don’t go putting the blame on others I hate that about you.”  
  
Komaeda’s eyes widened in that moment. It was hard to get an honest reaction on Komaeda’s face, so Hinata stopped to watch. “What did you say?”

“Give it up already and just tell me what’s wrong, or I’ll give you a good one.”  
  
“Go ahead and try. It would be an honor for someone as lowly as me to be the punching bag to help you express the talents of the Ultimate Boxer.”  
  
“You stubborn asshole.” Hinata reached his limit and went to punch Komaeda.  
  
Komaeda at exactly the same time like a mirror, went to punch Hinata. “That’s my line!”

Their fists sunk into each others cheeks, and both of them were knocked over. Hinata technically should not have been, but sometimes when he was more Hajime then Kamukura he became clumsy again.  
  
They landed on their backs simultaneously. Hinata thought it was a pretty embarrassing scene, he was glad nobody was there to see them at least.  
  
Then, in a stroke of luck just by coincidence at the exact same time somebody had crossed their path. A man wearing a hawaiin shirt, a cross around his neck, and loose khaki shorts walked out of the brush. His hair was a mess of tangles and curls like Komaeda’s, but it was bleached blonde rather than entirely white. “My, my, boys you look so spirited today.” He tilted his head back as he said it, causing the cross earrings he was wearing and the cross around his neck to sway as well. “Did something nice happen to you or something?”

 

😈

 

“It’s odd, that’s what it is.”  
  
Oddity specialist Oshino Meme introduced himself to them. He stood with a slouch, he looked like exactly the kind of man you might find wandering in the middle of the woods in the early morning, which is to say that just like Koameda he did not look like he really belonged anywhere in this world either.  
  
“You two are definitely under the affliction of an oddity. If you got lost in these woods for so long and you’ve just been looping back. I wonder if the woods themselves are odd… I’ve been looking for awhile now and I still can’t find the Shiranui village.”  
  
As he said that he reached into the pocket of his jacket. Oshino flicked open a carton of cigarettes, and then pulled one out. Komaeda waited until after he had litten it, to speak up.  
  
“Actually umm… can you please not smoke in front of me? Smoking causes cancer.” He asked, politely with his eyes downcast.  
  
Oshino considered it for a moment, and then just put out the cigarette and swallowed it rather than throw it away. “I’d hate to harm nature.”

“So then the woods are moving around us.” Hinata spoke up, but what he really thought at the moment was _what a weirdo,_ he was just trying to seem more professional than that.  
  
“That’s absurd. There’s no way that could happen. All the trees, and everything else isn’t going to start shifting around just to confuse us, we’re the ones who are lost.” Komaeda said, raising his eyes to glare at Kamukura, all trace of humbleness gone.  
  
“You’re a guy whose so lucky you can randomly win the lottery on a whim and make meteor showers happen on command and I had every talent ever shoved into my brain I don’t think we get to judge what’s too absurd at this point.” Hinata said, lashing his tongue back at him.  
  
“I think it’s like this. What’s fueling this oddity is a misunderstanding between the two of you. Did you two spirited youngsters have an argument or something?”  
  
“No that can’t be it, Komaeda and I would never argue about anything. We’re like two peas in a pod.” Hinata said layering his voice deep in sarcasm. “We started arguing because of the forest messing with us, we were getting along just fine before that point.”  
  
“Are you sure about that?” That man, something about him seemed off he tilted his head to the side once more. “Did you have an argument earlier than that, and not notice it? Is there something left unresolved?”  
  
“How would we not notice.” Hinata spoke up again.

“Hmm, I think it starts with the parents.” Oshino said, leaning his back against a tree.  
  
“Oh god, not more therapy.” Komaeda whispered under his breath.  
  
“You know thinking back, you remind me of a case I once took. A while ago a pair of parents came to me and told me about a child who seemed to be afflicted by a strange curse. Well, in the end I couldn’t do anything for them, but I heard an interesting story.”  
  
“An interesting story?” Hinata repeated back.  
  
“A story about a boy getting hit in the face by his father. He got angry, hit him, and white haired boy flew into a wall. Well, a skinny boy like that is a lightweight. Then, after the boy was curled up in pain from hitting the wall, what do you think he did, raven haired crimson eyed boy. ‘No, father, you shouldn’t hit a child in the face.’ He smiled and said that.”  
  
Komaeda went quiet.  
  
“The hell? Why are you bringing that up now? You think those are the words of a kid hit by his father. They’re not.”  
  
“It’s disgusting. Utterly innate goodness. It’s scary. Scarier than an apparition. It’s disgusting.”  
  
“So you’re saying the parents in the story are right? Are you on their side?”  
  
“I’m not on their side. I’m neutral. If anything, it’s how you should see the situation. Every time an altercation takes place, the person who gets hit, and the person who does the hitting each has their point of view you know. A third party wouldn’t know who’s right. No because there’s no rightness in the first place. What’s present isn’t rightness but convenience”  
  
“Moral Nihilism? That’s the least interesting form of nihilism.” Hinata said, so bored he wanted to yawn. “Even then, the kid, the kid was right.”

“As I said, that’s scary and disgusting. Of course those two who consulted with me weren’t parents to be praised. However, that child always strived to be right, more righteous than anyone, and because of that all the ugliness of the people around him were thrown back in their face. That’s why ideals like that, are disgusting.”  
  
Hinata had no idea what the man was rambling on about. It felt like it had nothing to do with the situation at all, and yet Komaeda looked so distant and so affected by his words. Hinata spoke up again. “Regardless of how you look at it, it’s not his fault. If other people were put off by him to the point where they had to get violent that’s the fault of their own pettiness.”  
  
“It is his fault. Those with power should be aware of the influence they have. He harmed the things he touched, the people he touched, he harmed them all just by being around them, and then he blossomed poorly as he grew up. That’s the boy I heard a story about.” The man finished his story and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “This time, everything’s irregular, this, that, everything, you guys are caught up in an irregularity but it’s not the fault of the oddity, it’s both of your faults.”  
  
Hinata closed his green eye. He glared at Oshino in front of him. “Please… don’t talk about that boy anymore. It’s unnecessary. Unnecessary to this situation. You’re just saying dull things.” _I want to kill him._ Kamukura thought, and he had to hold back his instinct to break what was in front of him. He promised, he would not break things anymore, he would devote the rest of his life to mending.  
  
“Oh, is that what you call sympathy?” Ohisno stood with a hand on his hip, and one knee cocked. Terrible posture, and a terrible smile on his face, Hinata had to wonder if he was not trying to provoke them on purpose. He was terribly indirect in everything, in his mannerisms, in his speech. “If you have sympathy for that boy, why don’t you marry him? Then he can have the family he’s never been able to have.”  
  
Immediately, the two boys looked away from each other. Kamukura stuttered out a response, “No, that’s a bad joke, Oshino.”  
  
“Really? I think it’s a great idea. It’d be an equal exchange for all he suffered in the past, he lost a family, he gained a new one. It’s nice and neat when things work out and end in balance, there’s bad luck and then there’s good right? I think it’s fine just living like that.” He looked to Komaeda who was still looking away. “Of course that was just to figure out what kind of argument you two had.”  
  
“Eh…?”  
  
“For instance, did the two of you disagree about the status of your relationship?” Oshino said, pointing to both of them.  
  
“Hm…?”  
“EH!”  
  
They both looked at each other once more, and then looked away even faster.  
  
“Really! All of this mess was over that? I’m still thinking about how Komaeda said he wasn’t my boyfriend when we both nearly died. Where the hell are my priorities?” Kamukura looked back at the spring, he wanted to sink into the water and disappear forever rather than face his embarrassment.  
  
“Who cares about the order of importance? Feelings are important too, aren’t they? Because there’s a feeling, you’re charmed. You can become a victim, a perpetrator, or an apparition too. But, Hinata-kun you have feelings too don’t you? Did you feel something when you disagreed.”  
  
“My feelings…” Hinata had been trying to stop thinking about himself, because he had to deal with somebody else first. “I didn’t like it, when you said we weren’t dating, you always go decide everything on your own.”  
  
“You’re the one who decided we were dating on his own.” Komaeda said, finally speaking up in a conversation he had been oddly quiet in the whole time.  
  
“I assumed you two were a couple, since you were getting along so spirited like that when I found you.” Oshino said stretching his back against the tree. “Well, your feelings aside you should consider white haired boy’s a little bit. Right now he’s probably… feeling a similiar frustration watching you. You’re trying to be so right, you’re striving so hard to do the right thing and fix all your mistakes you’re not acting like a person anymore.”

“I was never a person.”  
  
“Really? You weren’t? How odd.” Oshino announced with a tilt of his head. “I thought we were all people. That’s why our perspectives mattered. Well, that’s just my own perspective but I don’t think it matters, no matter what you do for yourself, no matter what you do for others, you won’t be able to save them. People are just saved on their own.”  
  
“Komaeda isn’t seeking help anyway. I wish he’d seek my help, though. If he relied on me, I would do anything.” Kamukura said, his one eye peeking out from the mass of his black hair. _Not just anything, I would have done everything._

“He may be unexpectedly seeking it.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Just because he doesn’t say ‘help me’ doesn’t mean he doesn’t need help. Just like you don’t like someone unless you say ‘I like you’. That’s a word you can’t just lightly say to anyone, right, Hinata-kun?”

Hinata stayed silent.  
  
“You guys both disagreed, about the direction you wanted to go and you both didn’t consider the perspective of the other, or if you did you didn’t understand it. I shouldn’t think of myself, or I shouldn’t think of others, I hate when people say that. You should try to be more balanced, think about both yourself and others, and I think you’ll find your way.”

Do both at once.  
That was always what Komaeda seemed to be doing.  
He was everything and nothing.  
  
"Everybody thinks differently, that's why it's so hard to find a balance." Oshino continued.   
  
"Alright that's fine, you can stop dispensing advice now thank you." Hinata turned around ignoring Oshino. He stopped thinking about how embarassing it might be to have this conversation in front of somebody else. “Why don’t you want to be my boyfriend?”  
  
“I thought for a long time all I needed was to have someone value me, and to die having that person miss me, but that seems too cruel now. I’d hurt you.”  
  
“Yeah, well maybe I want to hurt!”  
  
“Don’t push your masochism and self punishment onto me, Hinata-kun.” Komaeda stood up again but even looking directly in the eye his face still seemed hidden, like he was always hiding some part of himself. “I might… I might not ever be able to put things into words. Because words, meanings, exist only to be dirtied…”  
  
“Now you’re just being poetic again. Just say words, Nagito, you don’t have to make the sound  pretty.”  
  
“It’s hard…” Komaeda repeated the phrase that Kamukura had said earlier. “It’s so hard that even I don’t understand it. I want to say the words but I can’t… I can’t even say, f-f-f-f-f-f…” Even though he knew it, he knew more than anything else that Hinata was the first time he had ever felt like it was comfortable to use the word friend.  
  
“Oh, are you having romantic feelings, white haired boy?” Oshino called out to tease. Even though he was taking the time to advise them he still seemed entirely separate from this situation, like an outsider looking in.  
  
“No, all I feel towards Hinata-kun is lust for his muscles. I’m just hot for a school boy with good muscles who wears a tight fitting suit all the time.”  Komaeda finally said, putting some kind of feelings into words.  
  
“I can’t believe we’re ending the argument on something like that, what are we a couple of clowns?” Hinata grimaced, feeling embarrassed again in the background.  
  
“If you’re a clown then give me my smile already.” Komaeda asked him.  
  
“Okay, I’m overly serious, and to quiet, but I’ll try my best.” Hinata said.  
  
Komaeda had gotten tired from the walk. Kamukura offered his back again. This time, Komaeda actually climbed up and wrapped his arms around Kamukura’s neck like a normal person and they did not fight about the positioning at all. Perhaps something had changed between them or perhaps it had not.  
  
Oshino ended up following them out of the woods after Kamukura explained the Shiranui village was no longer there. This time he easily navigated the woods until he found a clearin, and then a road they had taken with the jeep previously.  
  
Kamukura had no idea why the Oshino guy was still around them. He seemed to given even and level headed advice, and was dedicated to understanding everyone’s perspective, but as balanced as he was it was unnerving. Humans were meant to have a little bit of bias. He seemed agreeable to everyone and everything to a creepy extent, like he felt no particular attachment to anything in this world.

First the bad luck, and then the good luck. That’s not a bad way to live, just watching that. Oshino had said something like that, and it reminded him of the times in the past Komaeda tried to explain his alien perspective to him.

He was lacking in empathy, even though he had understanding. Something like that.

“You know when I was in college, I always used to fight with Kaiki-kun an old classmate of mine. It’s not like I hated him or anything, it’s because we were so similiar, right and left hands, black and white, like two pieces meant to fit together that was exactly why we fought. I just got struck by that familiar feeling.”  
  
Oshino commented as he looked at the road in front of them. They had no choice but to hitch hike now.  
  
However.  
As luck would have it again.  
Right at that moment another car pulled by. Sitting in the window was Kurokami Medaka, he saw an unconscious Zenkichi in the back seat.  
  
“Where were you two we’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Medaka said, a bundle of excitement as usual.  
  
“Ummm… Doing important things, definitely not wasting time.” Hinata felt embarrassed again.  
  
“Wow, Kamukura-senpai you’re really outstanding. Even I wasn’t able to do anything on my own, I had to be rescued by this guy. Oh, did you find a random adult? I found one too.” Medaka did not suspect Kamukura at all and that only made him feel worse. She moved out of the window and pointed at the drive.  
  
Shiranui Hanten was sitting in the driver’s seat, unlike usual he exposed his face to all of them. In fact, Hinata could only remember one time he had seen the man’s face previously. “Hinata-kun, it’s time you returned the boxer shorts I left you.”  
  
“Hey, what are you doing giving my boyfriend underwear!” Komaeda said, peeking his head out from behind Kamukura’s hair.  
  
“Ehhhhh? What? You just said we weren’t boyfriends, you made a whole big thing about it!”  
  
And those two would continue being spirited youth’s for a long time.  
Make all of the garden of eden references you want, you’re not going to find paradise.  
It’s pointless, as long as you’re still alive all you can do is knock on heaven’s door.  
Or keep striving for it if you want.  
See if I care.  
I’m Matsuda Yasuke the boy who almost ended the world so I don’t have room to judge anybody.  
However, I would hope that my younger brother Kamukura would go a little bit easier on himself. Everything that he did wrong is obviously my fault for creating him, anyway.

How can all of these people keep thinking they’re the worst thing ever when I’m right here?  
Really all these kids are serious. Far too serious. I’m going to lose my role as the serious minded straight man if it keeps up.  
  
Actually that was just a lie. Those two have a place in each other, they always will, but I'm just a loner so there's no place for me. Except as a third wheel. That's what it feels like anyway having to narrate all these romances. Maybe next chapter we'll finally go back to being a shonen action manga.   
  
Oshino looked at the two boys. "Ah, right I need to get paid for my services. Do any of you have five million yen on you?"  
  
"What that price is way too outrageous! Why would we be carrying that much money around in the woods!" Hinata tsukkomi'd on reflex.   
  
Komaeda sighed. "Let's go buy a lottery ticket then." The bad luck had already happened, so he resigned himself to watching the good luck that would come next. 


	26. The Beast Who Cried Love at the Center of the Earth

Recovery is a difficult thing.  
It’s like climbing on a sheer cliff face.  
The higher you climb, the higher you have to fall back down.  
And you can always fall farther than you were last time.  
That’s what I, Matsuda Yasuke, a professional brain guy.  
Am an advocate of staying miserable forever.  
  
Kumagawa got a little bit stronger, because of all that time he took off from the main plot to be a part of a hurt/comfort fic instead. Now then, because he’s climbed a little bit higher how far will he fall this time?  
However, currently the one climbing up is not Kumagawa, but rather Makoto. He followed another boy up the staircase, climbing up to the very top of the shrine, his head weighed down by heavy thoughts the entire time.

Heroes don’t exist.  
There are shadows everywhere.  
The shadow of the infinite, indifferent crowd.  
The shadow of the past.  
And the shadows of those whom were turned into shadows by his hands that failed to reach them.  
In this world nobody can get saved. That’s what that man said, dressed in all black with his hair styled back into horns like the devil.  
He did not say it to be cruel though, he actually said it ot be kind. Because he did not want a child blaming himself for the people who he could not save. Saving others was a difficult thing indeed.  
  
Heroes don’t exist, but villains do, and that’s why the world is fundamentally unfair.  
There are some flowers that never bloom, but no flower stays in bloom forever and that’s why the world is fundamentally unfair.  
Makoto’s head was heavy with thoughts like that, you know typical teenage angst stuff filtered through a more philosophical lens.

After Mukuro and the others came home he was up all night with worry. If he was sleeping he might not have received that text in the middle of the night. The next thing he knew, he had met up with Shuichi Saihara, sitting on the rooftop of the same shrine Mukuro and Kagenui fought nearly to the death in yesterday. Despite the damage to the shrine all around him, the two boys sat on the rooftop and shared a leisurely chat, like they were eating lunch on the roof on a normal high school day.  
  
Makoto’s memories of how he had gotten into this situation were foggy at best. He just remembered Shuichi texted him, telling him he had come to Towa city because Kirigiri needed Makoto for something. He did not even ask what that something was, but then again Makoto would help almost anybody so he did not often worry about the details of what was asked for him. For him it was purely about helping others. He was pure like that. Pure like water. Pure like Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
“Yes, yes, hello there, Makoto-senpai. Do you want to watch the constellations before I tell you why I called you here? I hope I'm not boring you. ”  
  
“Boring?”

Makoto never expected someone like Shuichi to say that word. That empty word that always echoed around in Enoshima Junko’s head and then left her lips. He tried to get a look at Shuichi’s face, but as always Shuichi had pulled that hat over his head so only one eye showed.  
  
"I wanted to talk about heroes."  
  
"Heroes?"   
  
"Wow, such an interesting conversation so far. Hey, hey, senpai how do you feel about Kumagawa saving Junko? About Ikusaba saving Junko? Don't you think they should take some responsiblity and get struck by lightning and die." 

“Well of course you have to take responsibility for the people you save, I want to save people because… I want to keep seeing them smile. Every day. It’s not like I’d save them once then just ditch them..” He knew that was a really lame reasoning, but he was uncool, his sister even thought he was a wimp. “But I think getting struck by lightning is kind of going overboard.”  
  
“Do you now, Emukae Mukae-chan was resurrected after death.She didn’t have her death simply undone, she was resurrected. Even Ajimu Najimi can’t do that. In fact, in college they attempted a similar project over summer break together as a club, but Ajimu Najimi stopped them. However when Kaiki found the corpse of Emukae-chan torn apart on the road, he called his club together once more. It was such an ugly thing torn in half by a car, with the intestines  spilling out stretched between it like a yellow rop. They tried to fix that girl, and all parties responsible for her resurrection faced retaliation, and had curses placed upon their bodies. Kagenui and Kirigiri who handled the legs. Oshino and Kaiki who handled the right and left arms. And then Izuko who handled the head.”  
  
“Wha- why are you telling me this? Shouldn’t you be telling Kumagawa? He’s probably worried about his friend...”

Makoto was not the important person here. So he wondered why, Shuichi, Izuko, people kept focusing on him like he was.  
  
“Do you believe in curses Senpai? Well I suppose if you’re convinced that something terrible will happen to you if you let your feet touch the ground it’s basically the same thing as a curse.”  
  
“So are we saying curses are a metaphor now? Is… is everything a metaphor?” Makoto was feeling a little lost. He had no control in this conversation at all. It was like he was thrown into a river of stars, and had been dragged straight to the rapids.  
  
“If that’s the case, what’s going to happen? Kaiki already paid, and Ajimu paid for what she did to Kumagawa. So, who do you think will pay for allowing Junko to live. Hah, haaaah?”  
  
As he spoke. Suddenly, Shuichi stood up, his thin body contorting before the night sky as he threw his head back to laugh. His laugh was dry and forced out like a cough, as dry as the desert. When he sat back down again, Makoto noticed Saihara was closer to him, far closer, there was almost nothing between them at this point.  
  
“...Saihara-kun, if you’re going to sit down, sit on my left side.”  
  
“Hmm? Why is that?”  
  
“That’s Iuksaba’s seat.”  
  
“My, oh my. That’s not a cheap seat. Well don’t worry. I could never play the main character, or sit in the main seat."   
  
“The main seat? You talk so much, but I don’t ever understand squat of what you’re saying, Saihara-kun.”  
  
“You know, the protagonist doesn’t have to be the moral center of a story. They can even be a villain, but it’s the hero who is challenged to do the right thing.”  Shuichi said, Makoto had no idea why he suddenly seemed so enthusiastic, but a smile spread across his face and his face reddened. At least he’s enjoying himself, Makoto thought.

Doing the right thing.  
Munakata was obsessed with it, he put so much pressure on himself he had injured Makoto and tried to kill Mukuro. Even though they were children and he was a teacher.  
Kagenui also had tried to tear Mukuro’s family apart because it was wrong.  
The right thing was that hope? If it was hope then why was it so destructive?

He thought hope was a soft and gentle light, like the light of the stars.  
  
“Hey, Saihara-kun what do you think is more important. Correcting mistakes or doing the right thing. Most people are eager to correct mistakes more than doing the right thing, right?” Makoto asked.  
  
“Doing the right thing and correcting mistakes is different?” Shuichi mirrored the question back.  
  
“It’s similar but different. It’s not on the mark, but pretty close. If you keep correcting mistakes. If you crush mistakes on by one, will it be a pure white kind of right someday? If I had to pick I’d say it would be a pitch black kind of right.”    
  
As he thought.  
Of the word crush.  
Makoto remembered how Munakata had crushed, crushed, crushed, his head over and over again against a wall and closed his eyes. The weight of the memory made it feel like he was getting crushed all over again. He did not feel strong or heroic, he just felt weak. Like a kid who had no idea what to do or say to make it stop.  
  
“Pure white, like Kumagawa-kun. Also, pitch black like Kumagawa-kun too,” Shuichi on the other hand, seemed to enjoy himself, replying in a sing-song voice.  
  
“Anyways, in a nutshell. That’s what I want to know.”  
  
“But if you go that route, you won’t obtain what you really want.”  
  
“I can’t obtain…what I really want?” Makoto thought about it for a moment. He was always thinking about others before himself. He had forgotten himself. He thought he was forgettable.  
  
“If you go by everybody else’s standards, society’s standards, that means you can only receive what others give you. That’s fine but, you won’t ever be able to reach what is out of reach.”  
  
“Out of reach, like Ikusaba Mukuro.” Makoto repeated. He remembered that girl always staring out a window. The girl he failed to notice the first time around. That girl who had loved him like he was her entire world in one lifetime, but those feelings never reached him. Because he didn’t look. He only reached out the second time around because of a redo button.

Making many mistakes.  
Making many failures.  
Doing the same thing over and over.  
Hesitating, stamping one’s feet in frustration.  
Repeating by trial and error.  
And beyond loud protests.  
  
Makoto shook his head and said. “N-no this isn’t about me. Who cares what I want. I’m not a self absorbed kind of guy.”  
  
“Then who were you speaking about? Kumagawa-kun? He lived like that in the past once you know, he tried to become like Medaka-chan, to live happily like she did, by undoing every single one of his mistakes with all fiction.”  
  
“No, I don’t want to judge Kumagawa-kun. I… Everybody else judges him enough already.”  
  
“What about Kirigiri.I think the way she lives, is very righteously. Naegi-senpai what do you think is the right thing?”  
  
“I… well, I’m not smart so Kirigiri-senpai probably knows better than me.” When he looked up he just saw, the back of that girl’s head. Kirigiri was always right. He believed that. If she asked him to do anything he would in an instant. She was the one who would always solve the mystery, she would do all the work, and then lead him on to the conclusion. All he was good for was being pointed in the right direction. He was just some idiot who tagged along.  
  
Shuichi kept talking over him. He did not seem to be able to tell when others were listening to him or not, or perhaps he had been waiting a long time to share his true thoughts but had nobody to tell them to. “In trying to do the right thing, there are always side quests that come up, different objective matters, and also complicated issues.”  

“...” That was a little bit sad, Makoto thought. The reason Shuichi was acting so weird lately, did he just not know how to act? He seemed to be so excited about the stories behind the constellations, but the rushed way he told them it was like he had never once told the stories before. Nobody to share stories with, nobody to share the same sky with.  
  
“So that’s why Naegi-senpai. To win, there is an absolute need to lose somewhere along the way. Even in trying to do the right thing, a mistake will always accompany it. In the end, it all balances out to zero. Life’s plus minus is a zero. Isn’t that the phrase that pisses off Kumagawa-kun so much.”  
  
“Are you saying trying to do the right thing is pointless so why bother? That’s kind of a lame answer. Even Kumagawa, the edgelord that he is, wouldn’t say something so lame.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m lame. I think, the way of life Kirigiri-senpai, Kagenui-san, and Munakata-sensei practice is better. They claim to be justice, don’t they? Kirigri-senpai is a detective, so what she does, is solve crimes, convict criminals, corrects mistakes.”  
  
“Mistakes? It’s not cool to refer to people as mistakes man.”

“Well, let me put it this way. Rather than trying to be right, they try to be the opposite of wrong. They become the foe of evil to be justice.Isn’t that the same as you, assigning yourself to be a foe to despair you become hope… Actually that’s more like Munakata-san than you isn’t it? And me… I am also the one that seeks the type of “right” that corrects mistakes.”

“Maybe they don’t need to be corrected. What’s so wrong about them? Well except for Junko, Junko is wrong.”

“I have to, because she made the rules. Rules are important. If you existed in a game with rules, power wouldn’t matter Naegi-senpai you could become ultimate hope. That’s why it’s my job, the same way a detective follows the law.”  
  
“She…? You mean Kirigiri-senpai, or someone else.”

His question was not answered. Again, Shuichi changed the subject on an apparent whim. “What about you Naegi-senpai? What do you see yourself as? What is your role?”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about myself. I don’t really know about this kind of thing.”  
  
“I suppose, you’re always claimin and acting to be ‘dense’ right. But I think you’re really perceptive, and brilliant, that’s why Kirigiri-senpai relies on you.”  
  
“I...  Kiri… I think she was just lonely and I was the first person who talked to her. There’s nothing special about it.”  
  
“No, no you’re wrong. Hey, hey, you’re the type of person who wants to save everyone right? But there are some times where you can’t help. Because… complications, mistakes, there’s not always a clear way to help someone.”

“...” Makoto said, thinking there was a series of events where he failed to help Mukuro. He could never forgive himself, even if it was just another ‘him’ who failed to reach out to her.

“In those cases isn’t it alright to just pretend to be dense? Controversial situations can be troublesome. In that case, if you didn’t notice, you can’t be blamed for not noticing.”  
  
“Can’t be blamed? I...It’s not like I care about getting blamed, or hated, because it’d be the other person who suffers worse than me if I failed to help them.”

“And if they suffered, you would be the one who caused that suffering, right? That’s against every fiber in your being. Hey, from the start you must have known Ikusaba-san was a lonely person, that she was suffering, but she looked dangerous. You were confused about how to approach her, there wasn’t a clear right or wrong, a clear hope and despair, so you pretended… you pretended not to notice her. You enjoyed your happy school life.”  
  
“...I… It’s not like that I just wanted everybody to get along back in those days.”  
  
“Did you really notice nothing at all about Ikusaba-san? Or were you just a high school kid who didn’t know what to do to reach out to her, so you feigned ignorance”  
  
Makoto remembered the many times he walked past her desk without saying anything. He noticed during group activities she was always the odd person out. It would have been easy to guess that she was a lonely person in need of a friend. So why didn’t he… why did he wait until somebody else pushed him?

“I don’t want to be like that.” Makoto had curled up on the edge of the roof, he had stopped looking at the stars, stopped looking at light, and covered his face up to hide it. He did not want anyone to see him making such a weak face.  
  
“I think it’s fine if you’re like that. The vast majority of people when they don’t know what to do, opt to look away instead. That just means you’re no better or worse than anyone else. That’s what you wanted isn’t it? Not to be special?”

Makoto turned his head slowly, and just like in a horror movie when the camera slowly turned around the corner he saw that Shuichi’s face was right next to his, taking up the entirety of his view. He looked dealthy pale, his skin the lightest tint of blue like his hair, he looked like he had almost drowned.  
  
However, that was not the scary part, what was scary was how intensely Shuichi was scrutinizing him. As if there was no way he could hide any part of himself being looked at so closely.

“When Ikusaba-san was cold, you didn’t notice her. When she cried in front of you, you threw yourself at her. Even though you knew there was a problem, you only became interested when she was vulnerable.”  
  
“...N-no that’s not.”  
  
“Your kindness is… only directed towards the weak isn’t it? That’s why you’ll take pity on even those who fell into despair unlike Munkata-sensei.”  
  
“It’s because they deserved a chance to be happy.” Makoto said, his breathing getting more desperate, now he felt like the drowning one, it was a struggle just to keep his head above the surface and breathe.  
  
“Yeah, they deserve a chance to be happy. So you realize they’re miserable right? They’re hurting themselves just as much as everyone else, you see them as victims too.”  
  
“Then… helping people that need help is wrong? What kind of weird Junko logic are you on?”  
  
“You know, besides Munakata I think you can be compared to Kirigiri Jin too. You’re both normal people who admire talent. He tried to help a lot of talented kids, but when his own daughter needed him he ran away. I think, he just wanted to feel special by helping talented people.”  
  
“I don’t… I don’t care about what I feel. But…Kiri’s feelings about her dad, I wish I could do something about that.”  
  
“You know, Kirigiri-senpai has always wanted a family to replace the one she lost. Why don’t you marry her and spend the rest of your life giving her that family, to pay her back.”  
  
“That’s not a funny joke to tell man.”  
  
“I’m serious! Don’t you think Kirigiri-senpai and you look like a cute couple that you would expect to survive a disaster together?”  
  
“Since when did you become so interested in other people’s relationships anyway?”  
  
At that, Shuichi tilted his chin back and smiled. A playful smile. “It’s fine, it’s fine, I wouldn’t ship real people, only fictional characters. I’m interested though, what kind of adult do you want to grow up into. Munakata-sensei, Kirigiri-sensei, right now you’re just somewhere in the middle.”  
  
“Somewhere?”  
  
“The way you define yourself is so vague. It’s like your characterization is weak, shouldn’t you think a little bit deeper already? You can’t rely on Komaeda-kun to deconstruct you entirely.”  
  
Makoto’s look of confusion only worsened as he pictured that white haired boy laughing in the background, probably laughing at him for not understanding. “I don’t really see what Komaeda-senpai has to do with this. But really, who in the world are you Saihara-kun?  
  
“But well, if I were to force myself to say what I can in the moment. I am… a fan… “  
  
He rolled out his tongue.

On his tongue, it said (Ougi) the kanji for hand fan. It was like the kind a princess would carry in her right hand and fan herself with. In particular, when a collection of stars was in the sky, viewed in the shape of a hand fan, it would be referred to as (ougi). In other words, a fan of stars. A fan of the stars. I didn't come up with that wordplay, because I, Matsuda Yasuke manage to possess a stupid idiot brain despite being a person whose only good for studying brains. Despite being an expert in brains I still have no idea what to do with this useless brain of mine. 

Shuichi spoke up again. “Come with me. Kirigiri-senpai needs your help. You can’t turn down a person in need of help can you?”  
  
“Mukuro needs me more. I need to stay by her side, she just got hurt real bad.”  
  
“I see, that’s unfortunate. Maybe if Kirigiri-senpai yells help me, help me, you’ll be properly motivated. If you want to catch up with us, Kirigiri-senpai told me to meet her at the Hope’s Peak, eastern building, the one that was constructed by Munakata-sensei.”  
  
When Shuichi left. He stood up and disappeared so suddenly, it was like he had never been there to begin with. Makoto felt like they had talked about a lot, but it still felt like they had said nothing at all, and he would remember nothing of it in the morning.  
  
He was sure he walked all the way home, and he even checked if Shuichi needed him to walk him back to the train station. Yet, when he woke up in bed the next morning he did not remember at all the walk home, or the route he had taken.  
  
He had to check his phone somewhere Mukuro would not see him, to be sure the text message Shuichi had sent him had ever been real in the first place.

 

😈

 

Of course Makoto wouldn’t fall. He’s the hero. Lucky bastard. He’s not stuck being an anti-hero like the rest of us. Come on Nagito, high five.  
Oh that’s right I can’t high five him he’s not even in this chapter.  
Heroes fall, but that’s just usually a pretext for them standing back up again.  
For villains the fall tends to be more permanent.  
  
The moment where Kumagawa first stumbled was right at the end of the fight between Kagenui and Mukuro. As they walked home Junko walked by his side studying his face the whole time.  
  
“What’s wrong Junko, you’re being so quiet. Am I so cute you have no words left?”

『No that’s not it.』

She did not even bother to banter she was so focused. She grabbed onto his chin and tilted it up towards her. “Earlier, when you revived after Kagenui stomped on your head you were crying? Why was that?”

『Because she stomped on my head obviously! That hurts!』

“I’m surprised it hurt, considering you have such an empty head.”

『You could have a little bit of concern! If my cute face gets broken to pieces like that again, you’ll have nothing to kiss!』  
  
“You’re not that great of a kisser to begin with anyway. No loss there.”

『If I have no head you’ll have nobody to banter with.』  
  
“It’s not like you’re that great at banter either.”

『That is the single worst thing you have ever said to me.』

『 _I lied._ 』

Kumagawa realized.

『 _At the beginning of the conversation, I lied without even realizing it. Just like a reflex._ 』

The truth was Kumagawa had cried because while dead, he had returned to the same classroom as always. The classroom was entirely empty except for a small giftwrapped box. 

Kumagawa’s head rose slowly from the desk in that middle school classroom as usual. This was the classroom that he and Ajimu shared. In his memories she was always supposed to be there with him.   
He remembered the time when the world was just the two of them. Now that classroom was entirely empty. He stood in it alone.  
  
He tried to unwrap the present Ajimu left for him. 

『I can’t. Without you I can’t do anything.』  
  
He could not bring himself to look at what was inside. It meant acknowledging she was gone. If he closed his eyes and covered his ears he would never hear the words 'goodbye'.   
He knew what her not being in this classroom meant. If she was not in this classroom she was not anywhere in this world.  
He could not do anything without her.  
Even when she was still around he had never saved her, he never did a single thing. 

『I haven’t done anything! I HAVEN’T DONE A SINGLE THING. I DIDN’T CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF LIFE. I DIDN’T SAVE YOUR LIFE. MEDAKA-CHAN WAS THE ONE WHO SAVED YOU.』

Even as he screamed nothing in the room changed.   
  
『Anshin’in-san.』  
  
The name itself was painful to say.  
  
Because he knew he would not be able to say it ever again soon.

『Didn’t you say you knew me better than anyone else? That I’d always be in your heart? We’d always have this classroom! We were going to grow up together! Are you saying all that was a lie?』  
  
They were going to have fun together.  
He had promised.  
He may have been a liar but he never broke his promises.  
There was no one here no matter how much he screamed.  
He was screaming at an empty room.  
Just like the world outside, empty because it would no longer have Ajimu in it.   
  
Kumagawa looked back to his own reflection in the window. There was a dead tree waiting for him outside, its limbs all gnarled, bent, and twisted around. There was nothing but an abandoned child staring back at him from the other side of the window. Abandoned by his birth parents. Abandoned by Kaiki. Abandoned by Ajimu.   
  
He wondered if he truly cared about anybody, or he just did not want to be that abandoned child again. Anything to be someone different. Anyone's eyes would do. He did not want that white haired child staring back in his reflection, whose only companion was a twisted up, stitched together stuffed rabbit, to be alone.

The door hung open for a moment and he looked back on the room. It was no longer a destroyed and partially flooded room. It was the same middle school classroom he remembered back in its pristine days.  
  
Under the desk Kumagawa was hiding, his hair was cut short down to his ears and shaved at the sides. He held a piece of paper to his chest, and then tucked it inside of his uniform jacket. The door opened and Ajimu walked in, her hair reddish brown, a yellow ribbon in her hair, not a hair out of place looking perfect as always.  
  
She looked under the desk and then grabbed Kumagawa by the back of his collar dragging him out. Kumagawa hung his head and admitted he failed the test. Ajimu without hesitation said that of course he did, he’s stupid, he’ll likely be stupid for life. Kumagawa hung his head further and told her that’s not very encouraging.  
  
Besides I’m jealous of you she said that as she put his head on her lap. It was the only reliable way to get him to calm down at times like this. Her hands stroked his hair, all the way to his ear that was split on one side from a time she clipped it while trying to cut his hair. How could you be jealous of me, now you sound like the stupid one, he said that in response muttering it in her lap. You don’t know so much about the world, so you’re going to experience it all for the first time, you get to learn about it all from a completely blank perspective. I’m sure if you observe enough of the world you’ll find it beautiful, you just haven’t seen it yet. Because you’re a fool. She said that to him.  
  
I don’t know anything about the world, it’s all just pitch black to me but… if you say so Ajimu, you’ve never been wrong. If that’s the case then, I’d like to see it with you. I’m sure if I was there with you, if I was enjoying it, then you could learn to enjoy it too. The world is beautiful huh. He took a breath as he said that and looked at the crumpled up paper in his hands, he became so frustrated that he shoved it in his mouth and swallowed it. I’m never going to see the world if I can’t learn to pass literature.  
  
You may be stupid but you’re not so bad when it comes to understanding stories, it’s just the kanji that’s the problem right? From now on we can read in this room together. She said as she lifted up his head to look him in the eyes. If you get stuck on a kanji just write it down and ask me and I’ll tell you the meaning.

Kumagawa was hesitant. You’ll laugh at me and call me stupid, he said that with an embarrassed look on his face. Apparently even shameless Kumagawa realized how much of a joke his existence was. I don’t even like studying, he said that too.

If I laugh I promise I’ll laugh with you. Ajimu said as she cupped her hands on both of his cheeks. You’ll like it, because while being in a story alone is an incredibly tedious thing, sharing a story together is lots of fun.  
  
Sharng a story together. That was right they had shared a story together and it was now over, Kumagawa thought as the door closed on the room.

When he woke up after Kagenui smashed his head, his feelings were so strong there were tears in his eyes. All he could do though was wipe them away and put on a smile like always. The world was not even going to give him more than fifteen seconds to mourn Ajimu.  
  
The woman who found him.  
The woman who raised him.  
The woman who made him who he was.  
The woman he wanted to kill.

But even if he wanted to kill her, he didn’t want her to die.  
Kumagawa’s logic is as flawless as ever.

 

😈

 

Talking with Junko was so difficult that the entire morning she had rehearsed what to say. Like when Junko used to write out entire scripts for Mukuro and then give her flashcards and drill her on it. Hmmm, was her sister a little bit controlling? Mukuro wondered why she did not realize that until now. Junko was the kind of person who scripted out reality, yet could not have an actual human conversation. That was what she was preparing for and dealing with.  
  
This time her flashcards written in her own handwriting was more along the lines of ‘things junko will insult me over’ or ‘things Junko will try to use to change the subject’ both of these she was intensely familiar with. Junko was the kind of person who could come up with five thousand insults in half a second, and half a second was about as long as she could focus on one topic of conversation before randomly switching to another.  
  
The only person who had ever kept up with her in conversation was Kumagawa, but that was because he barely had a centralized personality to begin with so he was just as used to randomly changing, and going with the flow.

The moment she and Junko were in the same room, Mukuro stiffly moved her arm and put it on Junko’s shoulders. That was what sisters were supposed to do right when they were talking, make body contact and eye contact.  
  
Junko merely looked back at her with dull eyes. “Ummm…. Who gave you permission to touch me?”  
  
_This was already going wrong!_ Mukuro thought.

“Jeez why do I have to be alone in the same room as you? When we’re next to each other it’s even more obvious how different we are. Hey, can you not come within 1,000 kilometers of me with a face like that?”  
  
“Isn’t that basically deportation?” Mukuro reacted without thinking, all her previous preparation thrown out now. If this was a mission for Fenrir she did the equivalent of just standing up from behind cover and asking the enemy to shoot her, she made herself so open. “I-is it really that bad that we look alike? We’re twins after all, of course we look close.”  
  
“If you think we look anything alike then you really are hopeless. You look so bad I wanna photoshop your face off.” Junko glared at the freckles on Mukuro’s cheeks.  
  
“Wh-what’s wrong with my freckles? Makoto likes them he calls them sun kisses.”  
  
“More like sun slapped. Jeez, the sun slapped you in the face more than I did.” Junko leaned in using her one hand to squeeze the empty air between her red clawed fingertips. “Hey, big sis… Get a handful of that pathetic chest of yours and think reaaal hard. Actually, you don’t even need to touch it. One look is enough to see we’re different.”  
  
“M-makoto says sometimes more than a handful is too much for a guy. That mine are just fine!”  
  
“That’s just because your fun sized boyfriend has small hands, he doesn’t know any better.”  
  
“Oh my god, this wasn’t what I want to talk about at all! You talk about your own boobs more than Misogi-chan does!” Mukuro snapped at her. Her hand tightened around Junko’s shoulder. “I… I’m going to go off with Makoto. He got a text from Kirigiri-san saying he needed help but he’s ignoring it for my sake that’s why, I’m going to go with her to save her… a-and, I can’t watch over you right now so you have to watch over Misogi-chan.”  
  
At this, Enoshima tilted her head to the side. “Eh?” Her eyes sharpened, their harshness shaking Mukuro to the core as usually that look preceded Junko raising a hand. “Man, all three of your brain cells that were left did their best but it looks like you’ve gone and killed them too. They fought valiantly to the end. So tragic. A tragically brainless girl.”

“J-junko, what’s wrong with what I said. You have to watch over Misogi didn’t you say you’d take responsibility from now on after leaving Jabberwock with him-”  
  
“Number one, the Kirgiri-san thing is obviously a trap. God, Mukuro you used to be a villain did you forget what you spent the last eighteen years of your life doing? If somebody sends the heroes a vague message that their friend is in danger, it’s obviously to lure those heroes into a trap to come rescue her.”  
  
“Uhhh… I know it’s a trap but I thought I’d… fight my way out of it. Even if it’s walking straight into a trap, if Kirigiri-san needs my help it’s not like I can leave her.”  
  
“God, did Makoto’s boy cuties infect you or something? I told you not to drink his uncool aid, now you just want to go on another suicide mission or his sake?” As she said that Junko reached out and closed her claws around Mukuro’s hair, knotting it in between her fingers and pulling her forward to force her to submit. “Number two you literally just fought a huge battle declaring yourself to be my sister. I need you here. Who gave you permission to run off like you’re your own person or something?”  
  
“God Junko do you even listen to yourself talk…” Mukuro muttered under her breath, gritting her teeth from the sharp pain that was Junko pulling her hair. Usually this led to her head being forced to the floor and her being kicked like some dog. As usual too, there were about ten thousand things wrong with what Junko just said, and it only got worse the more she talked. Junko seemed perfectly aware of how terrible she was being and did not seem to care that much about being any less terrible. “Yeah, I’ll still be your sister. I’ll always be your sister. Even if Makoto becomes my new family I won’t ever stop being your sister, but that’s exactly it. Things won’t always be like when we were young, I won’t always be by your side. We can’t go back to those days That’s why, I can be your sister even if we’re apart.”  
  
“This is just… this is Fenrir all over again. You’re just being an idiot and going off on your own.”  
  
Mukuro sighed. “I don’t get it Junko. When we were together all you ever did was act like you hated it, you never once enjoyed it, even just now you told me to go one thousand kilometers away from you. But when I try to leave you get just as upset.” Something she had known for a long time, something she had fought against with every fiber of her being, she had denied and even deluded herself against, she finally admitted it. “There’s nothing I can do to make you happy, maybe there really is nothing that will make you happy Junko.”  
  
Junko’s eyes went dull like Kamukura’s. Not a bratty younger sister, not a charismatic and vain girl who always had the whole world in her palm, just a bored girl with empty looking eyes looked back up at her sister. Junko knew those words were true too, but Mukuro had always been kind enough not to say them until now.  
  
Mukuro stopped gripping her sister’s shoulder, and slowly loosened her sister’s fingers from her own hair. Rather than push her away, or leave her alone in her own miserable revelation Mukuro wrapped her arms around Junko’s shoulders. The way she had always wanted to embrace her sister but had never been able to. “Junko, it’s okay. Even if I go off with Makoto I’ll always be your sister.” She said those words again, but they only meant something to Mukuro, Junko could find nothing in that sentiment. “You have Misogi-chan now too. I have to grow up and work hard on myself so I can be a proper wife for Makoto.”  
  
“You’re just leaving me behind again, just like Fenrir.” Junko said, as she grabbed her sister by the shoulders and pushed her away hard enough that Mukuro fell backwards.  
  
She sat up on the ground and glared at her sister. “Junko you said you wanted to be accepted as yourself without having to change, well we did that. There are people who understand who you are now, that you can’t just suddenly stop being you… but you can’t expect the whole world to freeze too. People have to keep moving forward that’s just how it is. Just because you can’t change doesn’t mean you have to drag everybody down with you and… you wouldn’t like it anyway, I know you wouldn’t, because you get bored when everybody around you stays exactly the same.”  
  
“My toys are my toys, even when I throw them away they’re mine.”  
  
“Junko you have to know you sound like a child.”  
  
“Well then how am I supposed to grow up exactly? How am I supposed to know what growing up is like when I’ve always been smarter than the adults. When even my own twin sister couldn’t do a damn thing for me growing up.”  
  
“If you want to play games forever Junko that’s fine… it’s like I said you have Misogi-chan but, not everything you do is just because you’re trying to feel things and feel like a normal person. Some things are just your own self obsession, like… when you forced me to dress up and act like you, or when you made the ultimate despairs as desperate as you were. You’re so obsessed with yourself it’s sickening.”  
  
“Yeah, because it’s just so easy for me to leave my own head.”  
  
“Well, you’re the one who doesn’t even try! You’re bored of yourself but you make everything about you. Even Misogi-chan, you like that he acts different from you but look what you’re doing to him. You’re making him dress up in matching outfits, wear that dumb sweater all the time.”  
  
“The Junko love sweater is awesome, you just don’t know anything about fashion.”  
  
“Just how long until you make him wear a blonde wig, Junko? This is supposed to be about Misogi-chan’s recovery, but just like always it’s entirely been about you, he had to help with your relationship with Matsuda, then he thought it was his job to help you and me when Kagenui-san showed up.”

Junko had no response. Kumagawa was broken and she did not know how to fix things, she could only revel in how broken they were and break them further. Now her sister was leaving her as well and she was entirely right, it’s not like Mukuro was actually leaving her, she was just going on ahead and Junko could not follow.  
  
Just standing still in the same place. A perfect looking girl that was nothing more than a doll, if her head cracked it would reveal she was hollow on the inside. Just like Kamukura in that room long ago, she knew that one day that would be her fate as well, all of her energy would dissipate and she would lose even the will to move. At that point she would have nobody but herself to blame, she never fought against it, she just comforted herself again and again, she indulged her own twisted sense of self value and tried to make other people like her instead of trying to become like other people.

Mukuro was a normal person who had been twisted into becoming a despair sister by Junko’s own hand, and slowly by her own will Mukuro was becoming untwisted. What was Junko going to complain about, that she could not abuse her sister anymore? That her sister no longer acted like an obsessed sycophant who did everything to please her sister, even though Junko hated when Mukuro acted like that.  
  
When they were together Junko always made Mukuro out to the the deficient, half formed twin, the lesser sister, the one who was born wrong but that was only because she knew the truth. Mukuro was the better twin, the twin born capable of becoming a normal person. It was Junko who had been born with all the missing parts. To make up for that fact, she had tried to break her sister, to take everything away from her until she only had Junko left, so Mukuro would be as malformed as her, so she would only enjoy despair like Junko could.  
  
But that had been wrong from the start. No matter what she tried she could not force another person to become like her. What she thought was the actions of someone trying to share love and despair with her sister, from an outsider’s perspective it was just ordinary and petty sibling abuse.  
  
Junko found it harder and harder to see what she was doing was for the sake of despair, for the sake of feeling something, or if she was just using her sister as a punching bag, if she was just getting upset now that the sister who she hated for always clinging to her was now walking away from her and showing a will of her own. Mukuro was right there might be nothing in this world that can make her happy in that case, when her disappointing older sister stops disappointing her and finally acts of her own free will and Junko still cannot enjoy that.

Even if she did enjoy it, it would only be for a single moment. Then when that enjoyment disappeared, Junko would do anything to make herself feel it again. If she was proud of Mukuro for walking away from her, she’d break her legs to force her to stay and then watch what her sister would do next. That was all she could do, that was all she was capable of doing, wringing people out for everything they were worth and then moving onto the next person.  
  
There was nothing in this world that had value for her. She was the most worthless of all, but she was arrogant, all she had was herself so she tried to value herself even knowing she was worse and more deficient than everybody else.  
  
She was toxic by her very nature. She didn’t even try to fight it, she just pushed that toxic identity on others, she just broke others so they would be as malformed as she was, as desperate for despair as she was, but even then she was not pleased because in trying to escape her own head all she had done was created several more versions of herself to look at. And she knew she herself was boring, the most boring of all. Yet, she had to be confronted with that terrible self over and over again, and could only be blamed for her own actions.

She was the one trying to value that terrible self. She was the one who was obsessed with that self. If she knew any better she would let go, but she was afraid even to do that because she would have nothing left.  
  
She would be like Kamukura, staring at a wall all day.  
  
Her attempts to escape her own head just created more of her dismal self. Ironic, no?  Even when she reached out to others, all she really cared about was how much they were like herself. It was only natural someone so self absorbed like her would end up alone.  
  
She was fine with tragic endings, and even consequences in storytelling, the only thing she was not fine was how boring loneliness was. It was not despair. It was just an empty feeling. Only having herself, and she knew there was not a single interesting thing about herself, she had gotten bored of herself along time ago.

She was trapped in a maze of broken mirrors, and when she reached out her fingers would get cut on the glass, the light would warp, until she even looked at herself too much, drowned too much in herself, that she lost sight of herself. Then she would not even be like Kamukura, she would not be uncaring, she would just lose sight of everything, lose control of everything, and as she watched with dull glass eyes she would not even be able to tell the difference anymore, not between hope and despair, not between herself and other people.  
  
Her fractured thinking, fractured even further, that much in the few seconds of silence Mukuro gave her sister. She stood up once more, trying to catch her sister’s eyes but they were looking someplace else. “Junko, that’s why… that’s why I’m leaving Misogi-chan with you. I know you can do it, watch over him okay? Because he’s always watching over you.”  
  
What Mukuro was asking was impossible though. Junko knew it. She could not even watch over herself anymore, there was no way she could watch over someone else. Yet still Mukuro left her all alone after that, and she had no choice. She had to go back to where MIsogi was. The two of them were being left alone together, by Mukuro, the only good sibling between the three of them that connected them both.

 

😈

 

Junko arrived at the door to their hotel room.  
  
Kumagawa arrived at the door to their hotel room.

At the exact same time, standing across from each other. It was another bit of bad luck, because Junko had been hoping for a moment to collect her thoughts before talking to Misogi again.  
  
They both reached for the door at the same time, only to knock each other’s hands away.

『Uh, sorry-』  
  
“Oh, you’re finally apologizing for being born Misogi? Don’t you think you’re twenty years too late?”  
  
They both looked away from each other at the same time.  
  
Junko thought, _I should tell him about Mukuro._ _  
_ _  
_ Kumagawa thought, _I should tell her about Ajimu._

At the same time they both thought.

_Misogi will get upset if I just run off and deal with these feelings on my own again._

『 _Junko doesn’t like it when I’m miserable alone when we could be miserable together._ 』

Despite thinking the same thing, being on the same discordant wavelength neither of them could meet each other’s eyes. Junko finally just kicked the door down and Kumagawa followed in after her.

Standing at the threshold of the room Kumagawa played with his hair between his fingers for a moment. His shaggy black hair had grown long enough to reach his shoulders, and he knew that because Junko complained about it every day. Yet she said she liked Kamukura’s long hair, not that he was jealous or anything, Kumagawa’s fingers twisted in his hair. 『J-Junko, do you want to cut my hair?』  
  
“You’re trusting me with a pair of scissors near your neck, are you stupid?”

『Yes, I am stupid, a fool among fools, the king of the fools, we’ve been over this. Junko if you’re so smart you could at least think up new insults instead of using the same boring ones. Moving on. Am I just going to have to keep you away from all sharp objects from now on, are you a kid?』  
  
“Of course I’m a kid. I’m smart enough to know not to trust any adults.”

『Then who do you trust in?』  
  
“Nobody, there’s nobody in this world to trust in.”

『Don’t say edgy statements when you haven’t been through nearly half the things to justify them, you pretentious spoiled pretty girl! 』Kumagawa snapped at her, but that was just banter. She did not even notice the edge in his words. 『You can trust in yourself at least even if you don’t have anybody else. Trust that you can hold onto a sharp object for five seconds without immediately trying to stab someone.』

 _Trust in herself? Herself? Even if she didn’t have anybody else she should at least have herself._ Junko’s eyes widened for a moment, her face expressed an emotion without her even realizing it and she briskly looked away. “Well, I am the ultimate fashionista but some cases are just hopeless. Even if I cut your hair there’s nothing I can do for the rest of your face, unless you want to try photoshopping it.”

『That’s fine. I like my ugly face, it belongs to me after all. It lets everybody know how ugly my personality is, that way I'm not lying, unlike you whose beautiful face hides a bad personality.』

Kumagawa was fine, even with his minus self, even with his self that just got chipped away and made lesser and lesser. That was a twisted self value too, but somehow he was able to care about others, his self wasn’t inherently abusive the same way hers was. She did not get it. She did not understand him. They were so close and she still could not see how he kept living the way he did. Continually torn apart cut apart like pieces of a snake and even in those pieces still living, immortal, sewing himself back together again even though he knew he would just be torn apart all over again.

“Jeez, I didn’t say you were ugly. Besides, don’t look down on the talents of the Ultimate Fashionista, even you’re not a lost cause in my hands.” Junko walked back her insult, because she didn’t believe he was ugly. She thought it was beautiful, his emotions, his self, that pain he felt when he was torn apart. Feeling so much yet not falling apart. When she was a fragile girl who could break from even the tiniest weight of sentimentality. She couldn’t feel the way others could, and if she could, used to not feeling all her life, it would probably just exhaust her and drive her insane, yet she still doggedly pursued even the tiniest drop of emotion. She was envious of his ability to feel things, but also she was too cowardly to try to live the way he did.  
  
Sentimentality. Valuing others. Seeing them as people. Considering their emotions. All of those things were impossible for someone who could not even take a single step out of her own head. She was scared. Her head was all she knew. She would break in the outside world. She would break inside her own head. She would break regardless, so it was all so damn pointless.  
  
Even though they were so close, close to the point of overlapping she still had no idea how he lived the way he did. It’s not like she wanted to share it with him either, she just wanted to snatch it away from him, have it all, have everything to herself.

If she shared it with him she might lose it. He could always walk away like Mukuro and Matsuda had. That meant it was inevitable it would fade away from her, her one source of emotion would fade just like everything else did. If that was the case she might as well rip it from him, and strangle it between her own hands and kill it quick her. At least she would feel the sensation of ripping it apart, that was better than trying to cling to some faint thing that slowly went away from her.  
  
That too, would just be clinging to something for comfort, wishing for comfort, not wanting things to change, it would mean that she who turned her nose up at the whole world was just as shallow as everybody else. That she just wanted to be a part of that faceless majority as an outsider.

No, she was worse than the boring majority of people wasn’t she?

As she thought that, Kumagawa had finished wrapping a cape around his shoulders and sat in a chair with his back to her. His neck was right there, her fingers hovered at one side of it. Even with one hand, it would be so easy to strangle the life out of him. Kumagawa probalby would not even resist, but if he did resist she could see the betrayal in his eyes. The realization that this world was exactly like Jabberwock, there was no escaping Jabberwock for him, even his allies could turn on him and murder him at any moment that was the life he led.

No, no, no, no, no, she rejected it, she refused. She did not want to be accepted by the majority, she did not want to be like everybody else, as petty and dull as everybody else, she wanted to live as herself. She wanted to find as way to live as Enoshima Junko, no matter how many times her brain told her there was no point in anything so she might as well just die. Not just her brain, the whole world knew it was better off without a person like her, that was why she rejected it first.

『Junko can you stop contemplating strangling me and start cutting my hair already. I might as well do it myself at this rate.』  
  
“Nooo, it’ll look terrible if you do it. I love despair, but a bad hair day isn’t even worth the despair of it.”

『Then snip, snip, already.』  
  
“So snippy with me today.”

『You’re always snippy with me and you love cutting things apart but the one time I need you to be you’re holding out on me.』

“My destructive hobbies exist for me alone. You know the world isn’t black of white, it’s morally grey, and when I think about how sometimes good things might result from my destruction I get worried. Can you imagine me actually helping someone? How terrible.”

『So Junko does know how to be determined after all, it’s just that she’s determined to be the worst spoiled brat ever. It’s almost admirable how petty you are.』  
  
“Yes please, admire me. You saw nothing but ugly things in life before this just so you could properly appreciate how beautiful I was when we met.”

『Don’t go suddenly rewriting my whole backstory just to stroke your ego! I said almost admirable!』Kumagawa said as he heard the swish of his hair falling to the floor, lock by black lock, and the sliding of metal against each other. The sounds of metal scraping bothered him a little bit but he tried to put up with it.

“So about that rotten girl we saw.” Junko did not even address his comeback, she just changed the banter to something else on her whim.

『What rotten girl? Did we walk by a mirror on the way back from the shrine?"  
 

“Emukae-san. How do you feel about that?”

『Wow, Junko asking about it so straightforwardly you actually sound like you care about another person’s emotions. I need a second otherwise I’m going to get whiplash.』  
  
“How about I throw your skinny nonexistant butt around a little bit when I get bored, how is that for whiplash.”

『Oh thank god, Junko’s back to insults and threats, I couldn’t even breathe for a second there I was so scared.』

She tugged on his hair softly in annoyance. _Jeez, making fun of people over something they’re sensitive about. That’s only hilarious when I do it._

『If Mukae-chan wants to come and try to destroy me that’s fine. Those are her minus feelings after all, I want to accept them.』  
  
“Misogi if you accept everybody’s death threats like that, you’re going to make mine feel less special.”

『Mm, I guess it’s sad. I don’t know why… Mukae-chan doesn’t want to just go back to the way things were if she’s still alive. Nobody said she couldn’t be classmates with us again.』

He made such a sad and broken up face, that Junko got bored of it. She hovered her scissors over the scar on his ear, and then cut it again, so there would be two notches in his ear rather than one.

『Ow! What was that for? Is this a Junko needs to cause pain to feel thing, or a Junko can’t communicate thing?』  
  
Junko leaned forward and licked at the blood falling from his ear, before kissing him there. “You taste so delicious, and you’re showing me such a delicious face too.”

『Okay, got it, it’s a Junko is a huge weirdo thing!』  
  
“You’re the weirdo. You accept that others want to kill you way too easily.”

『Look if I didn’t forgive everyone who tried to kill me once I’d basically have no friends, and I wouldn’t have a girlfriend. I’m just used to it by now.』  
  
“You’re not supposed to get used to misery, it’s supposed to surprise you and take you off guard, come suddenly and overwhelm you when you think you just can’t take it anymore, and when you’re backed into a corner you show your true colors and do something unexpected.”

『Ewe Junko stop slobbering all over me you misery fetishist, you’re going to get your drool in my hair.』

“You know what-” She changed the subject again as another piece of his hair fell to the ground. “I think you only take pity on people like Emukae because being around other weak and dysfunctional people can make you feel better about your own dysfunction, you’re only trying to be the best of the worst.”

『Yeah, Junko that’s basically my entire thing. Keep up already. If you’re going to try to mindbreak me during daily conversation like usual you can at least stop trotting out the same stale observations.』 

 _Stale?_ _  
_ _Was their banter routine going to get played out?_ _  
_ _Was he the one getting tired of her._

Junko fell quiet, unable to bring up what she wanted to. Mukuro’s words were at the back of her tongue, she was choking on them, and then she swallowed them like acid that burned her on the way down. “Well, it’s fine if things can’t stay the way they always are. It’s probably better that Emukae-san didn’t want things to go back to the way they were. The people around you won’t stay that way forever, that’s fine, because things being the same forever is boring. That’s just the status queue.”

『Awe, Junko’s trying to comfort me with nonsense, the only thing I can understand.』  
  
“It’s not nonsense, it’s just the response to a nonsensical world. So if the world is inherently nonsensical then what does that make me?”

『Isn’t that just basically the ‘I know you are but what am I?’ comeback.』

“Anyway, you might be a minus like her but you’re different than her.”

『You know I’m starting to think you don’t just randomly change a subject around because you’re bored with what you were talking about a moment ago, or compulsion, you just do it when you don’t have a clever enough comeback.』  
  
“God, you wish you had the brain matter to comprehend how witty and clever I am. I just don’t want to waste all my best material on an empty headed jerk like you who can’t comprehend it.”

『Ahhh, but your head is empty too. Even crammed full of brains it’s empty.』  
  
“That’s what I was trying to say before you got us off topic-”

『Oh no, Junko going off topic in conversation to rant about something else. That’s never happened before. Anyway, let’s talk about random obscure manga references a little more-』  
  
“Shut it you, I might as well snatch your wig off and shave you bald at this point. You ridiculous and impudent little brat.”

『Don’t go describing my good traits like that I’ll blush.』  
  
She had finished cutting his hair. Clutching the side of his face, she moved his head to a mirror. In between her two hands was an unbelievably important thing. A thing that she never knew would come to be so valuable, a thing the old her would have dismissed as entirely worthless. She rested her chin on top of his head, and then as if to embrace him wrapped more of himself around her. “I was trying to say, she’s not like us. She’s still trying to fill herself up with love. Even Komaeda and Kamukura-senpai try to fill themselves up, we’re the only ones who are content with how empty we are.”

『I have you, and you have me, right? I’m watching you and you’re watching me.』

Kumagawa said it so simply. In that moment she felt like she could accept it. She was rarely able to feel temporary things like that, even her whims were forced. She knew she was a miserable, toxic person to be with, that Mukuro and Matsuda had just gotten tired of being around her, they had just gotten bored of her because they couldn’t enjoy despair the same way she could. Yet, this boy was smiling at her. Even if that smile was a lie she wanted to believe it.

『Ehhh? Junko you cut it so short! I haven’t had it this short in awhile!』  
  
“I told you the shagginess was bothering me. If it’s bothersome you should just cut it all off at once.” Junko reached forward and adjusted his head. “I’ll need to shave the sides but… just a moment…” She kept staring at that bewitching smile of his, a smile capable of bewitching a witch.  A string was tugging on her heart, pulling her closer, and simply because she felt like it, she kissed that smile.  
  
He blinked confused for a moment before going along with her.  
They had each other, they were watching each other, but they had gotten distracted. As Junko wrapped her arms around him and climbed up on his chair she forgot entirely about the swirling emotions Mukuro had made her aware of and forgot about telling them to Kumagawa. Her eyes fell shut as she looked away from them.

 

😈

 

『...?』  
  
Kumagawa was woken up with a phone call from a blocked number. Junko slept so soundly during her nap that rocks could fall at this moment and everybody could die (a definite possibility with Kumagawa's luck and love of nihilism) and she still would sleep through it and miss out on the despair.   
  
He clicked the phone open.   
  
"Ajimu Najimi is dead. Her last words were 'Live, Misogi.' This is unrelated to the first message, but as her killer Shishime Iihiko I decided I'd take pity on you and grant her request for her last words. Before coming to kill you next."

『Oh, thank you that's very courteous of you.』  
  
Kumagawa said, before hanging up.   
That confirmed it, in both the imaginary world and the real one Ajimu Najimi was dead.   
How do you kill an idea? With bullets apparently. Also, erasing memories tends to work too. Source: Yasuke.   
Kumagawa left the room not thinking about anything in particular, and not smiling for any reason in particular gripped by the feeling he needed to be alone. 

Junko woke up suddenly and rolled over on her side on the plush mattress the top of the line hotel had provided for her. For a moment she had no idea what time it was, but then she could instantly deduce it from the positions of the shadows on the floor. Her internal clock was perfect like everything else about her.  
  
She had wasted an entire day. Oh well, everything she did was going to sum up to zero and everything was meaningless anyway so she might as well waste an entire day acting like a dumb lovestruck teenager. Nihilism was so convenient sometimes she had no idea why other people looked down on it so much to continue sucking on hope’s tits.  
  
Her tits were way better than the tits of metaphorical hope anyway. Okay, this metaphor was escaping her she must still be sleepy. She remembered she had fallen asleep in the middle of the day next to Misogi and she felt the tension build up in her chest. The high emotion, the anticipation of waking up next to love, the feeling of wanting so much that your heart felt like it was going to explode, she wanted to enjoy it a little longer, maybe her heart would actually explode instead of mpetahorially and their love scene could be ruined by Kumagawa having to cradle her dying body.  
  
No, that was enough despair fantasies. She rolled around in bed excited to see him, and then her smile froze on her face. The spot next to her in bed was empty. Disappointment… Misogi always disappeared off somewhere and there were some times that she could not even find him. Disappointment, not in him though, but in herself for getting so worked up. He left his jacket behind though, it was still warm like him, and smelled like him. She gripped it close to her chest and rolled around for a moment trying to enjoy it.

“Wow, you’ve officially lost it.” She heard a voice that was hers, but did not come out of her mouth speak up. Her eyes trailed over to see herself watching from the reflection.

“Hallucinating a conversation with myself in the mirror. If my brain is so big it could have been more creative and less obvious with it’s breakdowns at least.” Junko complained, still gripping the jacket to her chest.  
  
“You should be thankful you have a single string of sanity left. What are you doing anyway? Rolling around like a lovesick teenager, you’re acting no better than anybody else.”  
  
“Bleeeeeh, this kind of scene is boring. If I was going to lose my mind I wish I’d at least lose it in style.” Junko buried her head in Kumagawa’s jacket trying to ignore it.  
  
Then suddenly she heard the sound of shattering glass. Her reflection in the mirror, stepped out of it like it was a portal to another world. Like a forbidden boundary had been crossed. There she was, standing in the flesh in front of herself, the reflection in the mirror had moved on her own and gained her own will.  
  
“Goodness, did I surprise you?” That other girl stepped closer and closer to the bed. She crawled to Junko’s side on the bed on all four, prowling like an animal, and then reached forward with a single hand to poke her exposed chest. Junko’s clothes were still lying on the floor, from earlier, wasting time goofing off, fooling around, playing the fool with MIsogi. “Everything’s fine. Just think of me as a ghost. You’re just coming up with new personalities to talk to as alway, a personality named desire that happens to dwell within you right here. Is that enough explanation?”  
  
“Is this a supernatural thing, or a losing my mind thing…? This is confusing, even for me.”  
  
“You’re the one whose confusing me, that is to say you’re confusing yourself. You’re confused. Now tell me something Junko. I’m dying to hear. How exactly is this despair? Aren’t you just doing what everybody else does right now? You’re clinging to shallow things, like love, and hope, and that boy in order to keep living.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You should hurry up and make your move already, or else some other bear is going to devour him.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Hey come on, be honest with me, won’t you?”

Her finger traced the contours of Junko’s body, as if it was some familiar thing, as if it had once belonged to her before they splintered apart. If it was a delusion it was a rather detailed one. She could feel the touch. What scared her at this moment was not that she had gone from arguing with herself, and losing control of when she would start performing a new personality on compulsion, to straight up hallucinating,  what scared her is she had no idea if this was a hallucination or not at the moment.  
  
Then suddenly, that other her leaned forward and bit her hard on her ear exactly as the other girl had done to Kumagawa, a loving kiss, she licked the blood up and giggled, exactly like Junko had done to Kumagawa. “The truth is, you never wanted Kumagawa-kun to recover did you.”  
  
“He was no fun when he was just sitting around in a room all mopey. I at least wanted him to stop doing that but… I don’t know what I wanted him to do next. Just… something interesting… I know he can so.”  
  
“Yeah, you’re jealous of him aren’t you? The first person who ever understood you, who ever tried to understand you, and he doesn’t want to be like you. He doesn’t want to stay here with you. He wants to heal and recover, he wants to become somebody else. He wants to grow up to be like Kaiki-san.”  
  
“Why would I ever be jealous of that sexy, sexy old conman? No, you’re right you got me, I’m studio bones, I’m really thirsty for a sweaty conman.”  
  
“And the person who can reach him, the person whose been helping him. It’s not even you, it’s Kaiki-kun. He’s the one who listened to him in the end.”  
  
Junko fell silent again. “...”  
  
“It’s because you weren’t first. The first person to find him was Ajimu-san, then Kaiki-kun, then it was Medaka-chan. You’ll never be first. They’re all in your way. No, they’re in our way.”  
  
“Our way… Hey, are you a hallucination or not? Actually, can I talk to you? How does this work! Goddamnit, if I’m losing my mind can’t it at least make sense, I hate when things don’t make sense.” Junko said, even though what she hated the most was how she could understand everything and make sense of chaos instantly. She was difficult like that.  
  
“I don’t need words to express it. We should just destroy what’s in our way. It would be so much easier if we were honest about what we want.”  
  
Honest?  
Had she been lying to herself?  
Was she just trying to go along with this, telling herself it would work because she was desperate? Desperate to cling onto something like everybody else? Was the only thing she was upset about was because unlike everybody else, she had nothing to cling onto, nothing to distract herslf with.  
  
Did that make Misogi only a distraction.

Was her brain trying to make her face the truth now?  
Had it gotten bored of lying to her, of trying to be something it was not?  
The problem with trying to live with lies was her brain was so smart it saw through most lies in an instant, she always, always, had to look at the dull reality.  
She admitted in a slow voice. “So that’s the truth. I want Kaiki-kun to die. Everybody Kumagawa-kun could care about more than me, I want them to die as well. I want to cut off every oppurtunity for him to leave me. So he won’t run off like Mukuro, or Matsuda-kun.”  
  
“Indeed. You’re a slave of desire. Is there any creature that doesn’t sin about you in order to live? Misogi forgot about you didn’t he? He forgot about you to stay in that virtual world and forget his pain. Mukuro forgot about you to go off with Makoto. Mastuda forgot about you in order to play with Ryoko, the less challenging version of you. Now, pay attention. Only one thing in this world is certain, and believe you and me, it’s not friendship or love. Desire is the only thing you can count on. Love is a savage emotion. To love one another is to rule them. To want to become one with someone so badly you’d devour them is truly cruel. Now let me tell you a truth.”  
  
She grabbed herself by the neck to whisper in her own ear. “Kaiki-kun, Izuko-san, they’re meddling, they’re getting in our way. Their intention is to separate Misogi from us. Just like in the past, when he thought Ajimu-san and Kumagawa got too close he separated them, it was an amputation. He knows you’re no good for him, that you’re wrong for each other.”  
  
“...”  
  
“If you don’t stop her, you’ll lose Kumagawa-kun in a boring way. Come on now, stop hesitating, stop playing hurt and comfort, the time has come to show you’re the real Enoshima Junko.”  
  
That’s right.  
Misogi was so distant from her right now, because she was not loving him properly. She was trying to play at being a normal girl, with a normal heart to comfort him. She had to love him the way Enoshima Junko could, otherwise it would cool off eventually, otherwise his interest would cool off.

If she didn’t burn something she would be cold. If she got too cold her blood would stop flowing, her heart would stop beating, she would be unable to move. She could accept being empty but she could never accept that.  
  
Love would not ever fill her up so why bother, if she was just an empty glass she should shatter the glass and see the pretty colors it made. Twinkling twinkling twinkling, it didn’t matter if it was only a moment, a moment was all she had before she would be subjected again to being stretched out to a dull procession of a time that felt strethed out into an eternity.  
  
She had to live in that one moment.  
Yes, that was right she had forgotten, this was all for her, it was so she could live.

 

😈

 

Kaiki had gone out. The moment he was alone for the first time in weeks, his phone buzzed again. It was probably more children. Really, really, what a pain. Yet he still answered it anyway.

『Ahhhh, Kaiki-kun where did you go?』  
  
“I needed a smoke. So I went to buy some.”

『You shouldn’t do that smoking can cause cancer.』  
  
“All kinds of living eventually lead to dying.”

『Not if you’re immortal, tee-hee!』  
  
“Don’t teehee me, not everybody is immortal like you. That advice doesn’t apply to everyone.”

『Maybe they should try being immortal too, instead of being lame old mortals. Anyway, Kaiki-kun, Medaka-chan called me and asked us to meet up so we can’t stay here anymore.』  
  
“Well, I did the minimum amount of fudging trying to teach you to pretend to be more like a person, so I guess I can leave the rest to you to clean up yourself.”

『Ehhh? That old saying ‘the students should teach themselves’ is just what lazy teachers say! Just because you’re a conman who doesn’t have a real job doesn’t mean you can be lazy.』  
_  
_ “I’m not being lazy, I’m being economical.”

『You’re not being economical either! Stop phrasing things in terms of money to make them more palatable to yourself you big slut.』  
  
“I can’t keep teaching you forever. Old soldiers fade away. WHat remains is the generation for the children.”

『You just left to go buy a pack of smokes don’t pretend to be so deep, you old loser. After creating a mess don’t try to show off for no reason, that’s my thing.』  
  
However, even after saying that, Kumagawa’s voice spoke sincerely through the phone.

『Thank you very much. You’re the first adult that’s ever listened to me. You saved me.』  
  
“Right. I’m done with you now, it’s the end.”

『Bye bye.』  
  
“See ya.”

『Hey, Kaiki-kun. Can I ask one thing?』  
  
“You can’t.”

『Can you come with us? Even if you’ll only make things worse, even if you have nothing left to teach me, even if you’re just going to try to swindle us, can’t you come with us this time?』  
  
Kumagawa asked, his voice dripping with sincerity. Whoever taught that boy to be honest, anyway, being honest was a terrible trait to have for a liar, it left you vulnerable.

“Mm, if you keep paying me I suppose there’s no reason for me to go just yet.”

『I’m glad. Then I’ve deceived you to my liking. I tricked you into coming with me.』  
  
“If somebody were to actually want me around, yeah, that would be a good lie to pull off indeed.” As he said that, Kaiki, always grumpy, always pale, remote, stiff, twisted up, like a dead tree finally smiled looking at the phone. He turned around to head back still keeping Kumagawa on the other line.  
  
When he turned around though there was a shadow facing him. Before he could even realize what had happened, a crow bar clubbed into the side of his head.  
  
Cut to red.   
Splash of pink.   
Red ate at the corners of his eyes, his field of vision became a hazy red, his iris shook back and forth from the sudden shock.  
Kaiki was no fighter. He instantly crumpled down on his knees and fell over. From the side of his face, pink leaked out onto the ground. There was a crack in the side of his head now. No good, no good, his head was the only good thing about him.

“Because of you… because of you…” Kaiki thought it was just his own vision fading for a moment, as he saw double. One girl holding onto a crowbar and one just watching, they dressed exactly the same.  
  
“Hey, you… did you know… Yozuru, and I have on our shoulders a curse of a sort.  A curse on my hand, and a curse on one of her feet. That’s why just as things are going right, they go terribly wrong like this. But a curse is just a strong way of saying paranoia. Hey girl, what are you cursed by right now?”  
  
Talking was all he was good for. Hopefully she did not hit him again, if he lost his ability to think, reason, and talk, he could tell no more lies. If he could not tell lies there would be nothing left of him.  
  
“Hey, cut it. I didn’t murder you so I could have a chit chat with you.” That girl got angry and raised the crowbar again. Bad, bad, that was bad. He had twisted his head back to get a look at her and the angle was all wrong. The next time she hit him, she hit him, she hit him, his skull split against the concrete. Drip, drip, drip, somethin was dripping out. Was she going to splash the grey liquid of his brain matter against the ground.  
  
Say something, anything, there had to be another lie to get out of this. While he did tell lies, he had made a promise just now, and he did not want to break that promise. “Well, it’s not like I’m particularly interested in talking things out with my murderer either. No wrong… this isn’t it either. Hey, Enoshima-san. Mind if I ask you one thing? Why in the world am I here? Why did you decide to kill me at this precise moment.”  
  
“What do you mean? Why are you here? Why are you asking such a philosophical question.”  
  
“Oh, right, right… Right… You, you’re killing me. That’s what’s happening. However, Enoshima-san. I still don’t understand how this came about. I don’t know. I can’t come to understand. Not me.”  
  
Perhaps it was because his brain was dripping cold onto the concrete in front of him. His eyes had spun enough from the impacts that he was dizzy. He tried hard to focus them, were there really two girls there or was he just seeing double. Think, think, think, because he won’t be able to think anymore soon.  
  
Death was a scary thing. He wouldn’t get to interact with people anymore. He wouldn’t have anybody to con. Lies or truth wouldn’t matter anymore. He’d just cease to exist. So as long as he could he had to keep watching.  
  
“What do you mean, you don’t know? I’m killing you.”  
  
“Yeah, but I don’t know.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“The reason why you would kill me. It’s true that you can kill without reason, but… at this moment don’t you think I’m the best person casted for you to kill right now? You’re killing the image of Kumagawa you see in me isn’t this convenient?”  
  
“I thought you didn’t like drama, Kaiki. What do you mean casted?”  
  
“Right. Casted. I can’t shake the feeling that someone casted me for this role. I feel like I was chosen for this role merely because I’m the suitable person to die right here like this, the mentor always dies in scenes like this right?”  
  
“...”  
  
“No, not just me. Yozuru, Izuko, why did we all start showing up suddenly. Enoshima-san, don’t you feel that way? Don't we seem perfect to contrast the kids that we’re being compared to. Aren’t you just killing me right now because you were forced to, because you have no choice.”  
  
“What do you mean I have no choice? I chose to kill you because I wanted to. Don’t take away my character agency like that, I may be a bad person but I refuse to have bad writing! You piss me off!”  
  
“Even that anger. Isn’t that merely anger to fit your role? Aren’t you killing me because, Enoshima Junko is supposed to enforce tragic consequences. What is the difference between you and me? We’re just doing what we’re supposed to do. Each of usplaced in the situation with the roles we’re given. We’re not allowed to adlib.”

“...This is wrong.”  
  
There was something wrong about this scene.  
The timing, the casting, it was all off. She was so used to writing the script it did not occur to her she could be playing a role in someone else’s.

Junko finally hesitated. Whether she hesitated or not did not make a difference however, as suddenly her two hands raised  the crowbar in the air and hit him in the head again.  
  
Kaiki coughed blood from the impact. He wanted to talk but all he could do was gargle more blood for a moment before he spat it out. “Just as I thought… you’re not even the one killing me are you? This scene is staged.”  
  
“I’m not the one.” Junko looked at her own hand. Hand. That’s right she could not carry a crowbar in two hands. She only had one. She looked back to see her empty hand and realized she was not the one holding the crowbar…. Huh? How far was the hallucination going? Was she here, or was she standing over there? She was doing it, she lost track of reality. She had dissociated so much it was like she was watching her own body be puppeteered along from an outsider’s point of view.

“You’re right, I don’t like the dramatic. It’s just my own personal distaste. I got sick of it. Positioned like a pawn, moved around like a pawn, you can only gain and lose. It’s just my own bitterness that led me to give up and become a coward.” Kaiki said,  in between bloody coughs as he tried to twist his body up to sit up and look at her eyes.”What about you? What are you going to do? Are you going to give up too?”

Those might have been the right words.  
Kaiki was a talented liar indeed.  
But there was only one person whose lies she wanted to believe, there was only one person who had ever successfully deceived her.

『Ah, Junko what is this cliche scene? Which one is the real one?』  
  
Kumagawa appeared suddenly.  
That’s right he had promised even when she lost track of herself, he would find her.

『Well, it’s obviously the one not holding the crowbar. The other Junko’s breasts are padded, and Junko prides herself in her chest way too much to ever pad her breasts. Besides if there are two Junkos I’m obviously going to pick the one with the bigger boobs.』  
  
That’s right, he was an idiot.  
  
Kumagawa threw a screw between them, causing them to scatter. He rushed towards her and wrapped his arms around her, he wasn’t embracing her just restraining her. The two of them wrestled against one another until Junko fell back on the ground Kumagawa on top of her.        『Junko, what are you doing? Do you really think I’m not allowed to have anything outside of you? Is that what you really want?』  
  
“I don’t… I don’t know…”

『Don’t give me a half assed answer like that! You wanted something so badly you would kill for it, so tell me what it is you want!』  
  
“I really… I don’t know anymore… I don’t know if I’m really here, or I’m over there.”

『Junko, that’s obviously a person in a costume. You got tricked by smoke and mirrors like that, well I guess an easy way to trick people who are too smart for their own good is a dumb plan like that they would never think of because they’re too overcomplicated.』

“You don’t know that! I could be hallucinating! It could be a supernatural thing! Maybe splinters are escaping my own head and becoming real…” Junko said, clutching the sides of her head like it was two sides that were going to come apart, like it would split apart and create two new Junkos.

『If you’re not sure about yourself, then look at me!』  
  
“I can’t…”

『Look!』  
  
Her eyes peeled open again, after she had shut them trying to reject the world in front of her, trying to reject the reality where she had lived long enough to finally lose her mind.  
  
The fake Junko behind them swayed her hips as she posed with the crowbar. “You don’t know that, I’ve heard a bunch of imposter Junkos are running around. Maybe, her imagination is making them real. You don’t know for sure, with all that supernatural junk floating around in the air.” She swung the crowbar and hit Kumagawa square in the side of the head from his position on top of Junko. “Perhaps this is what you really want made manifest. You don’t care about love, or despair, you just want to kill Kumagawa, or the closest thing possible.”

Kumagawa barely flinched, he merely turned his head to the side, his face twisted up in all sorts of anger and the venom from his scene with Ajimu earlier still coursing in his blood showed in his eyes, the poisonous eyes of a snake glared at her. 『I’m getting tired of his which Junko is the real Junko plotline, how about I rip that face off and we see who you really are.』  
  
She backed off, the venom in that glare alone instinctually made her afraid. “Ooooh, scary boy. Well, how about I leave you two alone. Junko, have fun dealing with the mess you’ve made. Lucky you, that’s despair you’re feeling.”  
  
The fake Junko blew them both a kiss, and disappeared suddenly like she was never there in the first place.

Junko suddenly flipped Kumagawa over. She pulled the scissors she had been using earlier from her pocket, and held them against his neck. “Make me feel alive, Misogi.”

『What are you doing?』  
  
“I want to kill you.”

His neck bulged against the scissor blades, turning red. Even Kumagawa did not seem to be able to tell if Junko was truly behind this, or she had lost control of herself to manic compulsion. 『I… I don’t want to die...』  
She watched the slow rise and fall of his chest. Felt his heart beat increase, that was because adrenaline was rushing through his blood at the moment. Kumagawa was so alive, that even his survival instincts worked, drowning in despair like she was, drowning in his own pathetic self, he was able to live somehow.  
  
She wanted to live like that. She wanted to be alive like that. Just then, she heard a car comin down the road. She saw her chance and let go of Kumagawa and tried to fling herself in front of it.  
  
She was caught in the air by his hand and slammed back down. 『Weren’t we going to try to find a way to live together!』  
  
“I’m no good for you, Misogi. I just killed the only good influence on you.”

『Why?』  
  
“I… I don’t know what to do. I think it’s true we can rely on each other, but I don’t know what to do to help you. Even if I used to, I don’t know anymore. I don’t know how to help you the way you helped me.”

『Like hell I know what to do about you either! But you have to try! You promised to try!  I don’t care if you lie to me, or manipulate me, but don’t break your promises.』  
  
His values were twisted, but that was how Kumagawa was different from her he actually had values.  
  
“It’s no good, if I try I’ll just fail. I’ll lose what little I have and become nothing.”

『So what? Having all your carefully laid plans backfire at last minute, realizing all your efforts were nothing and watching them all explode in your face! That’s the kind of thing you live for!』  
  
Junko saw it. Her own self, her own logic, coming out of Kumagawa’s lips, being thrown in her face. Her world which had thrashed back and forth so wildly, that her view of it was cracked, splintering, splintering, and falling apart finally found a center. She looked at Kumagawa’s face, as if it was the only thing. She knew for certain, that boy was real.

『You did help me Junko. You were the first person who ever wanted me around, exactly like this, as unfortunate as I am. I know I’m unnecessary to the world, there’s no place for me but… I for the first time I thought I had a place with you.』  
  
Junko looked at the bloodied Kaiki on the ground. She had tried to destroy that place.

『I was going to tell you, Medaka-chan called me on the phone. Ajimu-san is dead.』  
  
“Jeez, you really do have the worst luck senpai. What kind of timing is this? Fate has it out for you.”

『Don’t blame it on fate! Ugh, oh wait Kaiki-kun.』

Hurriedly, Kumagawa got off of her and went to Kaiki’s side. That man was curled up on the ground, his body twisted up in pain like the limbs of a dead tree. His eyes foggy with fast approaching death finally fell on Kumagawa.  
  
“...Do you remember what I told you a long time ago?”  
  
A vague thing to say, but it’s not like he had the presence of mind to be specific. What he saw in front of him was not Kumagawa but rather a white haired boy who had come home to find him after being in another fight. He seemed constantly afraid to lose his spot at that man’s side, he had gotten it in his head that he had to fight to earn it.

That boy with ragged white hair even with his face covered in scratches in bruises still looked up at him with a smile. A smile too bright for a shadow like him. He was going to be wiped out by its glare. That boy told him with a smile that it was alright, he did not mind getting bullied by others or having to fight as long as he could stay by Kaiki’s side. That was his only wish.  
  
He wanted that child to stop hurting himself. To value himself correctly, to assign the proper value. He was a bright and clever kid, but the whole world was going to overlook him, because he was covered in bruises and cuts, because his behavior was improper, and those things were considered ugly.  
  
It can’t be helped.  
  
That’s what people said when they looked at those who needed help he most. Even if his only help was a lie he wanted to help that boy in front of him, in the only way he knew how. He needed to get him to stop fighting. “They say your wish won’t come true if you say it out loud, Misogi.’  
  
That boy tilted his head, his white hair seemed to move in every direction as he twisted up his body further to look at Kaiki. 『Why is it that if you tell someone else, your wish won’t come true anymore?』He was taken entirely off guard. He believed everything Kaiki said. Kaiki was the first person to speak to him after all, Kaiki’s words were all he knew of the world. That fragile boy, being put in hands like his own.

“Because you can’t trust words, of course. The moment you put it into words and tell someone, that starts to pass aside your feelings. Words are nothing but lies, and nothing but cheats. No matter what the truth, the moment it is told,it becomes dramatized. If you… if you wish for it to be as… if you just want to wish for it, that wish can never be spoken aloud.”

『B-but then, Kaiki-kun. You never speak your wishes aloud, so how am I going to grant it to you? How can I make it up to you?』  
  
“You don’t need to do anything. That’s enough. Thank you for always trying to protect me. You’ve done enough now.”  
  
That part of them memory was just a lie though.  
He had not said those words.  
He had just left Kumagawa alone to keep panicking over whether or not he had destroyed his own chance at his wish coming true, and he had taken those words to heart and stopped wishing for things.  
  
Kaiki knew.  
He knew what he should have done. He should have reached forward and patted that boy on the head. To tell him the words he needed to hear. Because, the world was filled with unloved children, and he had been one of them at one point.  
What was the point of him surviving until adulthood?  
If he couldn’t even repeat the words he most needed to hear when he was younger, for those children who most needed to hear them now.  
  
I love you.  
That was what he should have said.  
In the present moment his lips twitched as he tried to say them. He was dying though, and he could not even hear Kumagawa yelling at him.

『Y...you lied right? Saying stuff about only being paid to take care of me, saying I was unnecessary, those were just lies right. There was a really good reason you couldn’t be there for me right? You were always thinking of me right?』  
  
“Y-you saw through my lies.”

『You were just pretending not to care right? To forget about me?』

“Y...yeah, that’s right, I’m just a liar. Your big brother, is just a liar.”

 _I could no longer think anymore._ _  
_ _Now I’m defaulting on my debt to this kid._ _  
_ _Yeah, I deserve this._ _  
_ _That’s what happens when you put off a loan. Interest is collected._ _  
_ _All those years I left you alone, I could have tried to go back and help you any time but I put it off until the last moment, and the interest collected and collected and now I can’t pay it off anymore._ _  
_ _Sorry, Kumagawa._ _  
_ _Because of me you had to get violent again._

“T..trust...K...Kichi… Ko...Kichi…”

 _Because he’s not an adult, he’s a child like you. You can trust him._ _  
_ _Damn, those are lame as hell last words._ _  
_ _In the end I didn’t get to teach that boy a single lesson._ _  
_ _The lesson to be learned here is…_ _  
_ _I can’t think of any good ones._ _  
_

As his eyes fell close, Kaiki watched his life flash before his eyes. The memory he had hidden even from Kumagawa. One day, one snowy day he was walking along in his overcoat as usual not thinking about anything in particular when suddenly he saw some small footprints in the snow. He followed them, and saw a boy with messy black hair, wearing old fashioned looking robes collapsed in the snow.  
  
He opened up the umbrella he was holding at his side over the child’s head. At first he wondered how much it would cost to give this boy a proper burial, it seemed whereever he had come from he had died on the side of the road without reaching his destination. Then suddenly the boy’s body stirred.  
  
“Hungry… I’m so hungry.”

“I’ll buy you some bread.” Kaiki said.

 _I have a terrible habit of picking up strays._ _  
_ _Oshino would make fun of me.  
They say money talks, even in hell.  _  
__Since I don’t have money saved up, I felt glad from the bottom fo my heart._ _  
__That I was able to earn some pocket change up until the very end.__ _  
_ _Can’t think anymore, hurts too much._ _  
_ _Let’s rest a little bit.  
_  
That memory faded out, like the film reel had just run out of film to play. All that was left was a blank screen.  
  
In reality, Junko sat up again looking at Kumagawa’s trembling back. “Are you like… okay?” The words of a master manipulator who clearly had an idea of what she was doing.  
  
“It’s fine, you were just being Junko, right?”

 _“_ You really don’t seem okay.”  
  
Kumagawa turned around, putting an arm over her as he crawled back to her on all fours. “No, really I’m fine. I hated Kaiki-kun after all. Ajimu-san too. I was going to kill them for abandoning me.”  
  
“Yeah see you do this thing where you insist you don’t mind when you really do, it’s like a pattern of yours.” _  
_ ₮He was over her. He eclipsed her. He smiled the same pleasant smile as ever. “I really don’t mind. Whoever you like whoever you love, whoever attracts you, whoever you embrace, whoever you kiss, whoever you have sex with. None of that matters: if you want to fall for Yasuke-chan, or Mikan-chan again, or even Izuru-chan, or even go for a harem route actually I’d support you. If you’re having fun it’s all fine. There’s no need for distortion, you can be yourself. If you becme an honest person, I’d be super happy for you. After all, I’m interested in how you turn out, Junko. Whatever way you change I’ll change with you. So you’re free to do and think whatever you want, if you want to spread despair that’s fine too, you’re just being yourself and I want you to remain the person I love, - but just one thing.”

Kumagawa’s pupils.  
Changed from blue gray, to just gray. Clearer. Purer. If they got any more pure, his eyes would be invisible. They would be pure white.

“If you don’t choose me, then I’ll destroy you. You musn’t choose something else, like you did back then when you jumped into the river. If I don’t have you, I don’t want anyone else. I will destroy everything without a trace, your whole world. I will kill everything and not even cinders will remain. It won’t even become despair, it’ll just be nothing.”

“You’re not lying are you?”  
  
“I’m not.”

 _I might have done an oopsie._ Junko realized.  
  
Kumagawa stood up and offered her his hand. That was the only hand she had to take though, so she took it.

A few minutes later Matsuda met up with them. “Jeez, getting rid of the body of old men again. It’s like I haven’t learned at all. Well of course I haven’t, I’m an idiot who never learns. Even life's most obivous lessons! Junko bad! Junko bad! Get it through your head already idiot."

“Yasuke-chan, they say the trio that buries the body together, stays together.” Kumagawa said.  
  
“That doesn't even rhyme! I hate this trio! I’d ask for a trade, but you two are all I deserve. Ugh. How could I have let myself fall so far as to actually be on your level.” He looked away. “Aren’t you upset at all? You were the one who liked that guy the most.”

“It’s no use getting upset.” Kumagawa kept smiling. “I did like Kaiki-kun but he’s gone now. He’s not in that thing, that thing is just a corpse. It’s not worth getting upset over.”  
  
Said Kumagawa, who was so used to gaining and losing. Who only knew the world through consecutive losses. He squeezed the hand of Junko who was next to him.

Junko had been staring into the distance spacing out for quite some time. There was some delicious despair, and Yasuke was being bitchy like normal but she did not even notice it. All that she could think about was Kumagawa’s hand in hers, a single connection, a single spider’s thread keeping her tethered.  
  
She watched him, and finally noticed something. “Why aren’t you talking like you usually do?”  
  
“I only talk like that to sound cool. But… there’s nobody left to be cool for. It’s… a little bit sad.”

“There’s me.”  
  
“Haha, Junko you already know I’m uncool.”

Said Kumagawa Misogi,  
Who had fallen so far he was practically at the center of the earth.  
Said the beast who cried love at the center of the earth.  
All of his strings had been cut, except the one tied around his neck. 

 


	27. So I Want You to Be Here, for My Sake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medaka's speech is a reference to Ox-san from Juuni Taisen.

So despite various knots, tangles, and frays the two storylines became tied together once more. That sentence was too neat and tidy to describe the disaster level of this particular group of teenagers, it’s more accurate to say the two plots experienced a full on frontal collision in traffic.

Before he left with Mukuro, Naegi stuck in his own head the entire time tried to ask a question of Kurokami Medaka. When he spoke it lacked his usual resolve or strong convictions towards his beloved empty platitudes. Instead, falterigly, fearfully, meekly, and with his words all tangled up from the untangling he had tried to do inside his own head that only made things more knotted, he asked how she could do everything so right - how he could do what was right - and do so without hesitation, doubt or mistake.  
  
She gave him a puzzled look. He blushed, embarrassed by the question, and he hoped it was not noticable enough to cause a misunderstanding because he already got accused of having feelings for multiple girls too much even though there was only one overly strong girl in his heart. Not to mention Mukuro was right behind him watching this conversation silently as usual.

“Hmm,” She said. Apparently, the puzzled look was not directed towards Naegi, but the question itself. “I’ve never thought about it before. Tell me, do you want to do the right thing?”  
  
Makoto gave the air headed response a shy nod. He wondered why he was always the shy one at moments like this.  
  
Medaka said, “Well, let me think about it. Sometimes it can be good to put one’s principles of conduct into words.” A moment ago Medaka had been going through morning stretches that looked like she was preparing to fight off the saiyans and save the earth, even with a broken shulder, but instead she crossed her arms and turned thoughtful. That too lasted only for a few moments, Mukuro was not surprised as that was about how long it took her sister to fiugre out most things. Makoto however, was surprised she was so quickly able to come up with an answer that he had been struggling with for so long.

“First,” Medaka said, “You decide to do the right thing.” She raised her unbroken fist into the air. “Then you do it.” She punched at the air in a swift, smooth motion, and said, “That is all.”  
  
Decide to do the right thing. Then do it.  
  
His hopes fell -- right off a cliff. “Is this what I sound like to other people all the time? How have you guys not killed me yet that is so annoying.” Makoto’s burgeoning self awareness just made him want to crawl deeper and deeper into his own head where he could never be seen again, he covered his face with his own hands to hide.  
  
“N-no, it’s really cute when you do it. Even if it’s annoying it’s the cute kind of annoying, like a small yappy dog.” Mukuro said behind him, trying to reassure him.

“Did you have to specify that it was a small dog?” Makoto said, failing to be reassured. Of all the things Mukuro was trained to do as a soldier, negotiation was her weak point. It was Naegi’s strong point, but not when he was second guessing himself like this.  
  
Perhaps it was just a problem of Medaka being too different from others still. The phlosophy was so esoteric, she might as well have not said anything. Maybe she’d tried to simplify it because she thought she was speaking to a person far less smart than she was, but if that was the case she overdid it by far.  
  
Medaka did not even seem to grasp that her words were misunderstood, or that the others were gossiping about her while she was right there. She was a weird and spacy girl like that, even if her intelligence was stripped away she would probably be like that. She was starting to develop a thing called personality after all, or perhaps she had it all along and nobody saw it behind the genius.  
  
Makoto finally spoke up. “I can’t do that… I can’t do anything, and that’s why it hurts so much because you guys around me are constantly trying to do things even if it’s the wrong thing.”  
  
Medaka realizing she was being spoken to again, responded looking Makoto in the eye without any hesitation, “Don’t you see? The point is that you can’t do the right thing unless you first decide to do the right thing. One way or the other , people err, circumstances carry them into misdeed. Without any reason, without any thought, without any intention, they find themselves having been turned astray onto the wrong path. The opposite never happens. No one says ‘Without realizing it, I found myself doing the right thing’ or ‘I inadvertently did something right.’ Without intent, there is no being right. Proper conduct requires proper intent. If you don’t choose to do the right thing, you can’t do it. If you say you hurt others because you can’t do the right thing, that’s because you haven’t decided that’s what you want to do.” She had tried her best to simplify it for the, but Medaka as usual did not pull any punches.

Makoto and Mukuro both tilted their heads to the side at the exact same time as neither had expected the air headed genius to suddenly launch into that speech.  
  
Medaka herself was equally as confused because she thought she had gotten better at expressing herself clearly lately. “I understand how you feel, because I used to think the world had to have meaning because I wanted my choices to have meaning but it’s the other way around. Your choices have meaning, because you make them even though the world is meaningless.”  
  
“It’s weird hearing you say the world is meaningless, now you sound more like Misogi-chan.” Mukuro said first without thinking.  
  
“Kumagawa… do you think he’d like this new version of me? He hasn’t talked to me, not as much as he did the old me…” Medaka suddenly became bashful and averted her eyes. There was a part of her that was just a fledgling girl after all who was only now enjoying her youth.  
  
Shuichi had said something similiar, that Medaka might have been able to solve this entire crisis on her own if she was in her prime. New model, old model, that did not sound right to Makoto no matter how many times he turned it over in his head. “There’s no old you or new you, you’re the same Medaka-chan.” Makoto spoke up without thinking. “It’s not like you reinvented yourself or became a new person, you’ll only ever be you.”  
  
Nothing more, nothing less, you’ll always just be yourself. Makoto had spoken up only because he was worried about Medaka, and the fact that he pushed his own worries on her made him worry anymore. He was a tangled ball of worry, the kind of ball of yarn that cats liked to play with at the moment. Mukuro next to him squeezed his hand as he stood up next to her once more.  
  
“Well, sorry we can’t stay with the rest of the group. We need to try to run off and save Kiri now…”  
  
“Do you think that’s the right thing to do?” Medaka asked.  
  
“Saving people is always the right thing to do. I think. Wait, should I think about that some more, is that what you were saying? Should I be able to say it more confidently if I’m believing it’s the right thing to-”

  
As Makoto wavered again, Mukuro’s hand tightened around his and she started to drag him away. “Alright skinny boy, it’s a long trip there we can think about it on the way.”  
  
“D-do you not like that I’m skinny? Should I go back to doing more push ups so I can look like Zenkichi?” Makoto squeaked as he was pulled away.  
  
“I like that you’re skinny it means I can pick you up like this.”  
  
“Why is everybody picking me up lately? Is it because I’m short?”  
  
They continued on like that for a little while afterwards as they walked away from the motel they were staying at. Medaka decided to go back to her early morning exercises because besides Makoto who was a freak of nature, aka a morning person, and Mukuro who woke up at four am every morning for her navy seal training anyway, the rest of the group all consisted of people who looked like they had not slept in about three weeks so she doubted they would wake up any time soon.

 

😈

 

After the two groups met up, they decided to spend the night in an average roadside motel that any group of teenagers might rent out when they were low on cash. Junko complained about this the most, especially since Medaka was rich, but her complaints were silenced because it was technically her fault the man who was paying for them all to stay in a high class hotel was now gone.  
  
“I can’t believe you two are both teen geniuses and the best way you could think of to get rid of the body was to hand it off to a random homeless person in a floral print hawaiian shirts,” Kumagawa said in a voice duller than usual. The three of them were away from everybody else in the motel swimming pool, Kumagawa wore a pair of black and white swim trunks.  
  
“Look, I got rid of enough bodies in the past for Junko. Why should you expect me to keep on doing it now?” Matsuda said. He wore a much longer pair of trunks that went down to his knees, and still had not removed his button up shirt, only rolled up the sleeves. He sat on the edge of the water only getting his feet wet as he paged through a manga volume.  
  
“Yeah, but you sucked at getting rid of bodies back then. People kept finding them. This is obviously your chance for character development. All along your character arc was about getting better at hiding the bodies.” Kumagawa said, the same smile on his face as always.  
  
While they argued over what to do with Kaiki’s body, soon afterwards a man with a hawaiin shirt had appeared and picked it up offering to take it off their hands. While he walked away carrying Kaiki’s still body bridal style, he murmured about how this always happened, and this was why he was never able to say goodbye, but the teenagers were too self absorbed to have any idea what he was talking about.  
  
“Don’t make my arc revolve solely around cleaning up you and Junko’s messes, I’ll kill you.” Matsuda snapped back at Kumagawa. “And you, quit ignoring us and pretending like this has nothing to do with you!”

Floating tranquilly past them, Junko had stolen one of them inflatable rafts and was lounging on it in a black and white bikini, in a pair of heart shaped sunglasses while sipping her drink. “Yasuke-kun, can’t you like see that I’m the worst off right now? I have to stay in this gross motel like I’m some kind of common person.”

“Don’t look down on common people when you’re far worse than most common people!” Yasuke snapped at her as he looked back to Kumagawa. “Besides, Kumagawa is the worst off here, and it’s your fault again.”  
  
“Misogi’s fine. See he’s acting all smiley and oblivious like normal.”  
  
“He’s not fine, he’s obviously in denial. He’s a tower of despair that’s going to come crumbling down any minute.”  
  
“And when it does won’t that just be like, the best? My heart’s beating a mile a minute just thinking about it, swoon.”  
  
“You know what I don’t even think you got manipulated, or you dissociated and hurt Kaiki. I think you just got a little bit scared of your boredom again and do what you always do, lash out and make the people around you pay the consequences.” Yasuke assessed coldly, wondering if there was any way he could sink the plastic inflatable raft Junko was floating on.

As her childhood best friend he was getting closer to seeing who she really was, a child lashing out and wanting attention. Someone who had absolutely no hope for the future would probably never to bother to grow past that stage in their life anyway.  
  
“He’s not even talking with brackets anymore.” Yasuke said, noticing that Junko was ignoring him.  
  
“I’m sure the author just got tired of always having to copy paste them when Misogi started speaking.” Junko said, at which point Yasuke felt he had no idea what she was even talking about as usual.  
  
“Umm, guys you know I’m right here right?” Kumagawa sank in further, rippling the water. “Haha, people just keep doing and saying whatever they want around me.”

“Junko refuses to care about the consequences of her actions, what an unpredictable turn of events this is.” Izuru said walking out of the changing room. He had not packed for the trip so he only wore his floral print blue boxers.

“What took you so long?” Yasuke asked.  
  
“It’s embarrassing…Everybody’s looking at my body…” Hinata muttered avoiding eye contact.

“You know the fact that you can feel inferior when you’re that tall and ripped is what makes you such an excellent minus.” Kumagawa said, he probably meant it as a compliment.  
  
Izuru sunk as low into the water as he could, with only his eyes and nose sticking out. With his long hair trailing behind him he looked roughly like a swamp monster who had awakened from the deeps.

Komaeda had tried to strip down too, but it left him too cold so he sat in one of the pool chairs with his boxers and his green jacket wrapped around him for warmth. “Don’t worry, I’m content watching all of you swim and enjoy yourselves.”  
  
“If you want to swim you can just swim…” Izuru muttered lifting his head from the water to say it, only to sink back down again when Komaeda did not respond losing his confidence quickly. Junko’s talks that could break anybody into despair was not a problem for him, but Komaeda’s passive aggression was an insurmountable ordeal.  
  
“There’s an easy way to get Junko to care, you just have to start talking about her.” Kumagawa said, describing the love of his life who was more shallow than the pool that he was swimming in whose water barely reached his waste. “I know, let’s play the imitate Junko behind her back game.”  
  
“This is boring…” Izuru said.  
  
“No, I said a Junko impression not an Izuru-chan impression! There’s a subtle difference!” Kumagawa got so worked up he started making waves in the water.  
  
“In order to get rid of all the hope, you must first let it flourish. Wait until the hope has grown to its largest size, and then burn it, all the way to the roots. ANd after that, only despair will remain. That is the world I seek.” Komaeda sat up suddenly and gripped his face as if it were falling into pieces, in the gaps between his fingers his eyes spun wildly black and forth, black and white mixing around until white despair and black hope became indistinguishable from one another.  
  
“That’s just something you would say, you just switched the words ‘despair’ and ‘hope’ around, that’s cheating,” Kumagawa complained. “Nice touch with the spinny eyes, those are so hard to do.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun, Matsuda-kun, Junpei in class A destroyed my science project. Can I cry on your shoulder about it?. Oh, Matsuda-kun why are you all beaten up? Did you get into a fight with Junpei over my science project? Oopsie, I forgot to tell you I was the one who smashed it. Hahaha, Matsuda-kun you look so funny when you’re all beaten up and angry like that.” Matsuda started out with an impression, but halfway through he seemed to be staring into the abyss of the past.  
  
“I think Matsuda-kun’s reliving his past trauma, that’s nothing to joke about.” Kumagawa said even though he joked about his own trauma all the time. He dragged a hand across his face and in the next moment he had a girly smile of careless glee plastered across it. “Today, party people I give you the death of hope’s peak high!” Immediately the smile dropped from his face and shadows collected on the creases, and wrinkles in his twisted expression instead. “This is where it all begins, can you hear? A mighty wind is blowing. Ready to knock it all down with despairful, despair!”

“Jeez, none of you get my genius. You can’t just impersonate Enoshima Junko-chan by saying despair a whole bunch of times in a sentence, there’s a certain art to it.” Junko said, finally lowering her sunglasses and looking up from her raft. “Ya’ll are basic Junkos at best.”  
  
“She’s right, it takes a lot of talent and effort to be that much of an unlikable bitch.” Matsuda said glaring at her, “And Kumagawa’s impression agitated the hatred in the pit of my stomach the most so yeah, he’s the winner. You’re the best at pertending to be the worst, congrats.”  
  
“Awe, it’s literally all I’ve ever wanted.” Kumagawa fawned back at Matsuda. “Oh, look Junko’s paying attention to us now I told you it would work.”  
  
Kumagawa bit a hole in Junko’s inflatable raft causing it to capsize. In return she spent a minute trying to drown him. You know, normal flirty couple things. Seriously cut it out on the PDA guys. When they finished playing around in the pool, Junko sat at the edge of the pool braiding Kamukura’s hair as he started to drip dry.  
  
“You know I think Nagito-chan’s impression was pretty close as well.” Kumagawa said as he dried off, putting a towel around his scarred shoulders. “There’s a lot of similarities between them, for instance they have the same taste in men.”

“Ummm, there’s nothing between us because Komaeda-senpai’s a total nerd and I’m cool. Case over, winner Junko like always.” Junko said looking up from her braiding sounding genuinely offended by the comparison.  
  
“No, no think about it. Komaeda only goes for guys who are total geniuses at the top of their field but really emo about it, or dumbasses who try too hard. He just happened to find one person who happened to be both of those at the same time.” Kumagawa continued, which earned a confused looked from Hinata’s mismatched eyes.  
  
“Did you just insult both of me at the same time?” Hinata Izuru blinked. Then suddenly he became timid again. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m his type, Nagito probably just wanted a normal, nice guy and ended up settling for a jerk like me.”

“Hey, stop insulting yourself. You’re insulting all the hard work that I did, rewiring you brain into frankenstein's monster.” Yasuke said, trying to be encouraging to his little brother in a typical Yasuke-esque manner, which meant insulting himself.  
  
Komaeda finally spoke up. “It’s odd that Junko considers herself cool when I dated the embodiment of all human research for talent, and she dated a basic tsundere and loserboy.” He would not miss an opportunity to feel superior with completely unearned confidence. “Actually, even her sister has better taste in men than she does.”

“Oi, oi, oi, let’s torture, I mean talk about somebody else already.” Junko decided for everybody else that it was time for a subject change. “Hey, Misogi, let’s gossip. Remember that time during the 47th round of the killing game that Hinata-senpai totally got a boner in the middle of the class trial.”  
  
“Y-you shouldn’t talk about everyone’s memories of the killing games, we erased those for a reason.”

“Yeah, the reason being you acted like an embarrassing idiot in like all fifty two rounds without fail.” Junko said, barely suppressing her giggles with her hand.  
  
“Oh, I remember. Didn’t Hajime-chan find us after the trial and ask ‘Hey guys, is it possible to get  so annoyed that your blood pressure rises and does weird things to your body. It’s just annoyance, right?’ Gosh no wonder you guys took forever to get together every single round.” Kumagawa said, scooting next to Junko so he could join in with her in the mean girl teasing.  
  
“We got together every single round…” Komaeda whispered to himself, obviously tuning out the rest of the conversation.  
  
“Well, to be honest Hinata-senpai was so desperate for attention he basically believed anybody who paid attention to him for more than two seconds was into him. I’m surprised we never got together in a round, I mean you stlll had Kamukura-senpai’s hunkalicious beach bod.” Junko said, finishing braiding one section of Kamukura’s hair she wrapped her arms around his neck and deliberately let her breasts touch his back. Kamukura was just annoyed by the gesture, but Komaeda and Kumagawa glared at the same time.  
  
“Junko, will you quit it? If you put Kumagawa and Komaeda in a bad mood at the same time, the combined bad luck is going to cause meteors to start crashing into the earth or something.”

“So you’re not jealous either, Matsuda-kun? How about I braid your hair next, don’t you want to know what it feels like to have my fingers all messed up in your hair, and pulling on it?”  
  
“Hey, little bro Izuru can you do a world a favor and just drown her already.” Matsuda spat back.  
  
Izuru finally pushed Junko away from him and into the water, but decided drowning her would take too much effort and he would feel nothing about it. “Hey, Kumagawa-senpai do you remember the time Enoshima couldn’t keep it in her skirt during a murder investigation and you two were fifteen minutes late to the trial after that?”

“N-no, we were just trying to help stop the trials. You know there’s a rule if Monokuma’s fifteen minutes late, everybody can go home and nobody is convicted in the class trial.” Kumagawa said his cheeks reddening.

Junko popped up out of the water. “That was way more embarrassing for Misogi than it was for me. He’s the one who couldn’t find his pants and just showed up in his boxer shrots hoping nobody would notice.”  
  
“They only used the talk sprites from the waste up during the class trial, it would have been fine if nobody looked.” Kumagawa whined. “Hey, Izuru-chan was trying to embarrass you how come I’m the one who gets dragged down with you.”  
  
“That’s your fate now, always to get dragged down into despair by me no matter how many times you struggle and swim to the surface!” Junko said, giggling in delight as after popping out of the water the first thing she did immediately was grab onto Kumagawa’s arm and try to drag him underneath the surface of the water like she was a siren, and he was that lost idiot odysseus who wanted to hear the siren’s call even after being explicitly warned not to.  
  
Kamukura finally spoke up as if just realizing it now. “Wait, we all almost died multiple times over the past couple of days. Why are we just hanging out around this pool like normal teenagers talking about nothing interesting at all?”  
  
“Maybe because you peeps are lame!” Junko said, while shoving Kumagawa’s head into the water.  
  
Kumagawa popped his head back up. “Well, maybe we are just a bunch of normal teenagers. I mean who says we can’t hang out like normal friends? We all have so much in common like…. Uhh… we all attempted to destroy the world! We’re the world destroyers!”

“Please find a better group name, I am begging you.” Matsuda pleaded, but begging did not work on the likes of Junko or Kumagawa.  
  
“As if I would ever be in a group with any single one of you.” Junko finally gave up on drowning Kumagawa again and crossed her arms standoffishly.  
  
Just then, Medaka wandered into the pool. “Zenkichi’s asleep still, he’s either in a coma at this point or just really tired.” Medaka said, before catching part of the conversation. “The world destroyers? Can I be one? Some people used to believe I was born to destroy the world.”  
  
“No way, Kamukura-senpai! Tell miss perfect she can’t be a part of our group! She never even once tried to destroy the world! She’s a total poser!”

“Junko’s cliquiness aside…” Kamukura wanted to pretend he knew what he was doing at the moment at least. “Now that we’re all caught up on each other’s stories, we have to figure out a way to finish Iihiko, so we can all go back to school.”  
  
“Ugh, why would we put all that effort in just so we can go back to that lame school and pretend to be normal students while being bored out of our skulls.” Junko whined again, clinging to Misogi in the water this time.  
  
“We have to figure out a way to finish Iihiko so we can all go back to school and Junko can go to hell.” Matsuda said.  
  
Junko smiled at him, “Sure, it’ll be fun as long as Misogi comes with me. I bet I’ll be the queen of that place in less than a week.”  
  
“You don’t need to kill him to drag him to hell you’ve already made his life a living hell.” Matsuda snapped back at her.  
  
Kumagawa just kept looking back and forth between the two of them like a confused child.

“Hanten’in-san lectured me the whole way back on why challenging Iihiko was a bad idea, but that only motivated me to want to fight him again more. We have to keep crawling up and win, even if abnormalities, minuses, or even talents won’t work against him.” Medaka said, the only one who was not getting distracted by the banter though she felt a little bit left out because of it.  
  
“If abnormal or minus skills won’t work, then how about a style?” Matsuda suggesting, giving Medaka a side long glance. “When we were with Kaiki-kun, I asked him and he said the originator of all styles was my father Matsuda Fukurou. If we find him, we’ll probably defeat Iihiko and get your friend back as well.”  
  
“Hmm, little brother? You remember Shiranui…? You do care about me after all!”  
  
“I told you to stop calling me little brother, I regret being helpful go die please.”  
  
“Wait, everybody forgot about the little candy eating gremlin that’s always following Hitoyoshi-kun around whose backstory I haven’t figured out yet?” Junko asked.  
  
“Everybody’s memories got erased? Yasuke-chan, what did you do this time?” Kumagawa fundamentally lacking in any innocence because of his upbringing, did a terrible job at playing innocent.  
  
“You go die too!” Yasuke snapped at Kumagawa.

“Enoshima, you remember too? As expected of one of my friends!”  
  
“Umm, we are not friends? I'm out of your league?”  
  
“Well we’re enemies and friends and enemies are basically the same to me.”  
  
“No they’re totally not! You quit that! Stop ruining the classic villain, protagonist relationship, that’s like the one thing I still like about being a villain. Ugh, just quit assuming relationships in general because you have no idea how to talk to people.” Junko said practically hissing the words in Medaka’s direction.  
  
But Medaka did not seem to notice the genuine venom behind her words. “You’re such a good enemy Enoshima, I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun fighting as soon as this current fight is over.”  
  
Matsuda decided to intervene before the two girls were at each other’s throats again. “Come on, Medaka-chan. Let’s go see him. Your father that you killed, and the creator of all styles Matsuda Fukurou.”  


😈

 

“Was taking a bicycle really the best way to travel…?” Makoto asked. Usually riding a bike between lovers was considered romantic, but Mukuro pedaled so fast that he was holding on to her back for dear life.  
  
“Well you said we shouldn’t call an uber, and then steal the car and make the driver drive us to the airport for free because technically that’s ‘kidnapping’ and ‘grand theft auto’ and ‘I’m too much of a wimp to do that even in video games’.” Mukuro said in a voice lacking much emotion, though on the inside she already felt bad that the morality of stealing cars did not even occur to her because she was so used to stealing vehicles to chauffeur Junko around. “Well, once we get to the airport if they have a spare plane, or helicopter I can just fly it.”

“You are so competent…” Makoto muttered in amazement that the talent on display in front of him, being wasted on a normal guy like him. “Wait, wait, wait, stop here! This is where I was giving us directions to.”  
  
“Huh…? This isn’t the airport.” Mukuro said, hitting the brakes on the bicycle which was going so fast it left skidmarks in the ground. “This is just some normal house in the middle of nowhere.”  
  
“Actually,” Makoto scratched at the back of his head sheepishly. “It’s my normal house in the middle of nowhere.”

At which point Mukuro immediately tried to run away. Makoto had to wrap his arms around her waste to stop her, but even then he was too weak to do that and ended up getting dragged along. “N-n-no Makoto, me meeting your family is such a bad idea.”  
  
“Why? It’s normal for a guy to bring his girlfriend to meet his family, especially when we’ve been dating for two semesters now.”  
  
“B-b-but I’m not normal, and they’re going to hate me.”

“What reason could they possibly have to hate you?”  
  
“I was going to kidnap your sister and hold her for ransom to blackmail you into killing your classmates?”  
  
“Well it’s not like you actually went through with that plan and you feel bad about it so, if I can forgive you for that I’m sure my sister can too.”  
  
“Most people aren’t like you, Makoto.”  
  
“You deserve a chance to see what a family is like.”  
  
“I do have a family already, it’s weird, and a little bit twisted but it’s mine I don’t need to impose on your family. Really, it’s fine let’s just go save Kirigiri.”  
  
“But you want to save Kirigiri-san just because she’s like family to me. So let me pay you back please, I thought about this a long tie and I wanted to do something for you.”  
  
While the two of them were arguing, the door they were standing in front of slowly swung open. Naegi Komaru watched her older brother hang off of some unfamiliar girl she did not know who seemed to be desperately trying to get away from him.  
  
“Big bro I know you’re kind of lame, and you’ve never had a girlfriend before but I thought you knew better than to harass women like that.” Komaru said, watching her brother with the kind of familiar look of disappointment that only a younger sister could have. Mukuro recognized it.  
  
“How am I cursed with the world’s worst timing…” Makoto let his grip on Mukuro loosen, falling backwards and giving up now that he looked like a low life in the eyes of his sister.  
  
However Mukuro moved faster than he did immediately catching Makoto in her arms before he could fall. As timid as she was, and as much as she wanted to keep her head down with her tail between her legs she looked up and met Komaru’s eyes while picking up Makoto in her arms. “It’s okay, Makoto’s my boyfriend, so he can harass me or cause trouble for me as much as he wants.”  
  
“Mukuro, I know you’re trying but that really doesn’t make me sound any better.” Makoto shyly hid his face between his hands not sure how this could possibly get worse.

Komaru welcomed them all inside, still eyeing her brother suspiciously. For a few moments the three stood awkardly around each other avoiding eye contact. Then, Mukuro decided to start the conversation. She immediately threw her head down and started to bow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sorry, and also, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Bro, what did you do to her?” Komaru said, tilting her head in confusion at the apology bomb the ultimate soldier just set off.  
  
“It wasn’t me! Mukuro, you don’t have to apologize. You haven’t done anything yet.”  
  
“But I was planning on doing something, and if something happens in the future it’ll probably be my fault.” Mukuro said, her whole body trembling with her apologies as she kept her eyes firmly affixed on her feet.  
  
Makoto looked nervously back to his sister, with his luck he should have been expecting an immediate disaster but he was hoping for Mukuro’s sake it might go normally. All he wanted was to give her a small taste of his normal everyday life, the same one she had been denied her entire life. Komaru however seemed to be taking the strange situation in stride. “Oh, I get it. She’s like one of those girls who looks super tough on the outside but is actually super sensitive on the inside. I didn’t know that was your type, bro. So why did you start dating him, are you into kind of wimpy nice guys?”  
  
Mukuro stopped her apologizing to look up. “Makoto’s not wimpy, he’s protected me more times than I could count. My type is, short guys, with spiky brown hair, who smile sweetly,  and would try to save everybody no matter how reckless it is.”  
  
“So basically just my bro right?”  
  
Mukuro nodded.  
  
“You know my bro seems like the kind of guy who’d at least have one or two normal crushes but I never expected him to confess to anybody.”  
  
“Oh, I confessed to him.” Mukuro said as she straightened up. “Love is a battlefield, and she who strikes first, strikes hardest… that’s just a metaphor though I don’t know anything about actual battlefields, teehee.”

 _Mukuro’s basically short circuiting_ Makoto thought as he got closer to her to observe her in case anything else went wrong.  
  
Suddenly as she straightened up she started to notice. Mukuro walked over and pushed down both the antennaes of the antennae siblings and compared their heights with her two hands. “Even though she’s your younger sister in middle school she’s taller than you, that’s so cute…” Mukuro took a step back bringing her hand to her face, to cover up her gasp.  
  
Makoto’s face immediately reddened, but Komaru did not seem too bothered. She instead put her hand on Mukuro’s stomach and started to feel it. “Whoa, your girlfriend is like way ripped, how many ab crunches do you do a day?”  
  
“Like a couple hundred, it’s a part of my military training- I mean I do it as a part of that new diet… the uh… navy seal one. It’s a fad diet.” Mukuro said, staring down at Komaru’s hand that seemed to be magnetically attached to her stomach.  
  
Makoto grabbed his sister’s hand and yanked it away. He always hated sharing things with his sibling, like when she borrowed his manga volumes without asking just because he lost interest in series after they stopped being popular. “Hey, where’s mom and dad, are they home yet?”  
  
“It’s a weekday so they’re obviously still at work. Don’t forget about your normal and boring life just because you go to that fancy school now big bro. Actually, shouldn’t you still be in school, you’re not skipping class are you?”  
  
Makoto actually had run away from the school because he was accused of being part of a conspiracy to destroy the school, and hid his girlfriend’s terrorist activities but there was no way he could tell his little sister about that. He did not want to dsappoint her. Being lectured by her was far worse than facing down Munakata. He tried to put this into words because speaking was supposed to be his thing, but it came out as an eloquent, “Umm….”  
  
“Oh, I get it. You’re skipping school to get all lovey dovey with your girlfriend. How cool, and how very unlike you big bro.”  
  
“That’s not it! I don’t want to set a bad example!’ Makoto’s voice squeaked. “It’s just… I wanted to introduce her to my family, because I’m serious about this.”  
  
“Weird, you rarely get serious about anything but okay. Nice to meet you, I’m Komaru. What’s your family like?” She asked, it was a perfectly normal question to ask, but a terrible one to ask Mukuro.  
  
Nervously, Mukuro drew a phone out of her skirt pocket and then showed the lock screen to Komaru. “I have two younger siblings, my younger sister is a trashy man eater whose terribly impulsive and makes bad decisions, and my younger brother is cute and always makes me smile.” Her lock screen was a photo of the three of them, taken to say goodbye before Mukuro parted from them to go looking for Kirigiri.  
  
“Ummm… are you sure this isn’t a spirit photo?” Komaru’s eyes narrowed at the phone in front of her. “Or it’s not cursed or anything?”  
  
“Huh, why?”  
  
“There’s this really creepy guy with this terrible black aura in the corner behind you and your super cute sister. I thought maybe a ghost photobombed your picture, or he kind of looks like a corpse too.”  
  
“N-no, he just looks like that. He’s gloomy but in a cute way. D-don’t you see his smile?” Mukuro’s head sunk a little bit. She thought it was obvious between her trashy sister and Kumagawa that Kumagawa was the more likable one, but she guessed most people would assume it would be Junko just based on appearance.  
  
“Yeah, but he kind of looks like the monster that would appear and kill you in three days after you see him smiling menacingly at you in the corner of a photograph.”  
  
“H-he just doesn’t photograph well.” Mukuro said as she shrunk into herself more. “I-I’m sorry, I’m a terrible thieving woman that stole your older brother away but I’m dating him with the intention of marriage so let’s get along please.”  
  
Komaru silently assessed Mukuro for a moment. The quiet was like agony to Mukuro, and she wished the other girl would start insulting her for a moment because at least that would be familiar. Then, suddenly the corner of her lips quirked up and a snicker escaped them. “You’re weird, you’re definitely weird. It’s weird that my way too normal brother would fall for such a weird girl, this whole situation is weird but… I kind of like you already. You’re funny. And for some reason my big brother looks more mature now, is that your doing?”

Mukuro raised her eyes again, still nervous and hesitant about this unfamiliar feeling in her chest. “N-no way, I haven’t been able to do a single thing for Makoto yet. He was already that manly when I met him. He’s especially strong because he helps people even though he’s weaker than anybody else.”

 _Since when did my brother acquire such a fangirl._ Komaru thought, but she thought it might be too rude to say and the girl looked sensitive, so she only smiled at her.  
  
That smile made Mukuro’s heart skip a beat. _She smiles just like Makoto does. Too cute. I might be overwhelmed by the combined cuteness of two siblings._ Just a normal younger sister who teased her older brother, the same kind of sibling she had wanted her entire life. For Mukuro this kind of normalcy had only existed in the realm of her dreams up until this point. She still had no idea what to do or say about it, the moment seemed delicate, and anything a violent girl like her could do would easily shatter it like glass. It would be a lot easier for Makoto if he just got to go back to his normal life, and enjoy his normal family, but the two of them were already together and Mukuro had decided to sink her teeth into that boy and never give him up like a proper wolf.

“Well, Ikusaba. What kind of things do you like? Besides my brother…”  
  
“Ummm…” Mukuro instantly went down her list of interests. _Don’t talk about military stuff, don’t talk about military stuff and scare her._ “I like… manga?” That was always a safe bet around Kumagawa at least if she needed something to talk to.  
  
“R-r-r-really! Most girls don’t like to talk about manga past middle school so it’s been ages I’ve talked about it with anybody besides my brother! Hey, have you read the Bomb Inside Her! It’s like, required reading for high school girls. It’s about a girl with bombs in her womb, so if she falls in love they’ll explode. Then a boy named Shota Honen appeared suddenly and said he loved her!”

“Huh? That sounds like an easy situation to solve, can’t she just perform surgery on the battlefield and then defuse the bomb? I mean, I’ve never done that, manga is fun, let’s talk about manga some more. If you can lend me a volume I’ll read through it and tell you what I think. I’m used to my sister forcing me to read things so she’ll have someone to talk about it with anyway.” Mukuro said, her nerves acting as the opposite of a filter and making every thought coming through her head come spilling out at once.  
  
“Oh, I’m glad you’re not one of those people who instantly looks down on manga just because it’s not literature! I’m not sure I could get along with you otherwise. Come on, I’ll show you my collection in my room.”  Komaru said as she grabbed Mukuro’s hand and led her forward.

Makoto smiled as he watched the two of them from behind. He remembered the wisdom his senpai Kumagawa gave him for this moment. _It could have been worse. In fact, I’ve endured a lot worse. If I was involved it probably would have gone way worse than it did, so have fun with your stupid baby problems that are tiny in comparison to mine._ Kumagawa did not exactly have a way with words, but he meant well and Makoto always could tell that from the advice he gave him.

 

😈

 

  
“FIrst we took a train, and now rental bikes. You’re really something, Medaka-chan.” Matsuda said, pedaling as hard as his skinny boy body would take him. He was eternally cursing the fact he was not nearly as strong or handsome as Zenkichi who, he probably should not have been envying since the boy was currently in a coma but he was insensitive like that.  
  
“I can’t do anything about it, Hanten’in-san got angry and went back, and using theroad will be faster for us anyway.” Medaka said at the bike at the head of the pack.  
  
Lagging behind the two of them was Kumagawa Misogi, who hand Junko sitting on the back seat of his bike with her arms wrapped around him. “I think you’re the one this would be faster for, Medaka-chan.”

“Ugh, did we really have to ride a bike to go to Miss Perfect’s house? Can’t we just take limos like normal people?” Junko whined, even though she was not doing any of the actual biking.  
  
“I’m starting to worry about what you think normal people do. Your perception’s all twisted like usual.” Kumagawa said, without looking back, as with Junko holding  onto him his heart was currently in his throat.  
  
hatever Junko was about to say was forever lost as she changed her mind. “Rabbits don’t actually die of loneliness you know. They just tend to bond closely with other rabbits.”  
  
“What about bears, do they mate for life?”  
  
“Polar bear males try to eat their young so they usually separate.”  
  
“Okay, you really know everything don’t you?” Kumagawa asked.  
  
“I don’t know everything.” Junko answered. “I don’t. I don’t know anything.”  
  
Huh? That didn’t sound like her normal line.  
  
“Junko, don’t start being humble it's far too unlikely an event, I don’t want to get struck by lightning even after we took the precaution of leaving Komaeda behind.”  
  
Before they could address her strange quiet mood, suddenly Medaka spoke up again. “Um, well, I guess it’s as you think. Whoops. It seems we managed to get here by the morning. Look, we’re finally here. This is my home, they call it the Kurokami Mansion.”  
  
As they pulled up in front of the house, its palace like construction unfolded before them.

“God, my bottom hurts. And it’s numb. And my skirt got wrinkled.” Junko said. Whatever he was concerned about earlier, Junko’s loud personality quickly reasserted itself.  
  
“It’s not my fault.” Kumagawa said.  
  
“Stop trying to talk your way out of this or your tongue is mine.”  
  
“That's either suggestive or very violent, but it's sexy both ways! Damnit! I've definitely lost!"   
Kumagawa’s face reddened. Junko used inuendo at appropriate times, it was super effective!

“So, how exactly might I have tried?” he asked.  
  
“”Well, as a small suggestion you could have given me your bag as a cushion. There’s just stupid manga in there anyway.”  
  
“Do you not give a crap about anyone other than yourself?”  
  
“Please, don’t use such rude language with me. It’s only a small suggestion. Can’t you be a little bit more generous with your girlfriend?”  
  
“Isn’t generosity, and other human values of kindness just annoying behavior to you because your values are all backwards?"   
  
“People who show their affection in backwards ways, cold and mean at first and then loving eventually are just called tsundere aren’t they?”  
  
“You don't even deserve to be called tsundere anymore! You're nowhere as cute as my precious Yasuke-chan! I've never seen anything but tsuntsun.”  
  
“No, that’s just a front I put up. You’re almost at the dere part.”  
  
“Since when? I’ve been waiting for the dere for awhile now. Jeez, I guess dealing with you requires an unbeliavable amount of patience.”  
  
“MIsogi, the way you put it, it almost sounds like I'm something other than a likable, energetic and fun-loving girl who easily makes friends and stands as the star of her class's attention.” Junko said, folding her arms behind her back carelessly as they approached the main building. “Whoa, this place is big. It’s almost suited for me.”  
  
“It’s almost big enough to use your ego, you mean.” Kumagawa interrupted her. “It’s more of a palace than a house.”  
  
“Hmm… Maybe ‘house’ isn’t a fitting term. This town belongs entirely to my father after all.”  
  
“The entire town!?” Matsuda yelled out in shock in the background.  
  
“Yeah, well in ancient times I guess it was called a castle town? Maybe. Father has got a hundred of these towns here in japan, and about four hundred abroad. He moves between them as needed. It’s thanks to my brother that the Kurokami group flourished as a business, but the political influence of my family had already spread worldwide before that point.”

“Okay, hoarding that much money has to be at least as evil as anything I could do, Miss Perfect. Have you ever thought of tearing this all down? You know for funsies.” Junko suggested in the back of the group.  
  
“Don’t you mean the greater good?” Kumagawa asked walking next to her.  
  
“If it was fun for me, then that’s the greatest good I can possibly think of.”  
  
“To be honest, I didn’t like this home either. It always felt like more of a box to study me in than a home.”

“Oh boo hoo, miss perfect and rich people have problems too.” Junko mocked in the background.  
  
“You are the last person who gets to complain about that, miss everyone spoiled me so much I decided to destroy the world. Why are you being so grumpy anyway?” Kumagwaa said, poking her in the side as they walked along.  
  
“Because Medaka-chan has all these cool elements in her backstory, like mad science and human breeding and they all turn out to be boring. Her dad could easily be some insane evil dude trying to destroy the world in an ancient political conspiracy, but he’s probably just going to turn out to be boring too.”  
  
“Enoshima are you… wishing my family is evil so you can get more entertainment?” Medkaa said looking back from the head of the group.  
  
“Um, duh? I thought I was pretty clear about that.”  
  
Matsuda was the only one seriously on topic. “BUt if he has that many houses how do you know he’ll be here today?”  
  
“Don’t worry, I properly set up an appointment.” Medaka answered without even looking back.  
  
Just then the sound of laughter rom above interrupted their conversation. “Papapapapapapapa! My Daughter! Look at how the collar of my mantle is galltantly standing, as if to say… welcome backollar!”  That man stood at the very top of the mansion as if to show off.  
  
“Uh… That’s an old man who has always lived with the Kruokami family and likes to play around…”  
  
“Hey, don’t call him an old resident that likes to play just properly introduce him as your dad!” Matsuda shouted in the background.  
  
“Papapapapa! Pan! Papa! Pan!” That man leaped into the air while singing a strange fanfare like he was tuxedo mask, only to immediately hit the ground faceplant because he had jumped from three stories.

  
“Oh I get it.” Junko commented looking at his still body on the ground. “Being an annoying weirdo must be genetic.”  
  
The Kurokami residence had a dress code that would not allow them to enter if they did not wear clothes that cost at least ten million yen. As they were dragged away by servants to get new outfits, Junko struggled and yelled that her current clothes were worth more than the lives of you peasants, but before the red queen could order their decapitations she was gagged by the servants.  
  
A few minutes later she walked to catch up with Kumagawa who was currently being strangled by Matsuda while the other boy attempted to tie his tie. She watched for a moment enjoying the scene before clearing her throat.  
  
“Gosh, has neither of you learned how to tie a tie yet? You’re such helpless children.” She said as she walked over to each of them, and untied and retied their ties for them. Matsuda looked away the whole time, and only muttered thank you under his breath after she walked away from him.  
  
Even with one hand she was better at it than either of the boys. When she did it for Kumagawa, he smiled as always. “I’ll be peter pan so I can make out with captain hook, how’s that for symbolism.”  
  
“Can I be the crocodile so I can eat Junko?” Matsuda asked.  
  
“No way, a crocodile always smiles and you never do Yasuke-chan.” Kumagwa said, with a smile that showed all his teeth.

“Papapapapapa! Pardon me, pardon me. Bein able to see my beloved daughter once again has got me too excited. Oh, and I’m sorry for making you change clothes. Of course you can take those home with you as a present.”

Kumagawa had fought tooth and nail against the servants to wear his Junko Love sweater over his well cut suit. They sat on the couch across from Medaka’s father in this order, Kumagawa in the middle, Junko to one side of him laying down and taking up the entirety of the couch resting her head on his lap while she stared at his phone, and Matsuda sitting on the couch’s arm. “It’s fine I don’t need the generosity of an elite. The only clothing I need until the end of time is this sweater.”  
  
“Please wear something else other than that dumb sweater already!” Matsuda raised his voice again.  
  
“I wish I could wear western style clothes too, father. Japanese style is ill-suited for this mansion, wouldn’t you think?” Medaka said, walking out in a kimono, which contrasted her bandaged up face in an odd manner.  
  
“Papapapap!! Don’t say that, it really suits you! If you have time would you like to do up your hair, too?”  
  
“Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that.”  
  
“All the time in the world wouldn’t fix that hair anyway.” Junko said, without raising her eyes from her phone.  
  
“That said, father I’ll get right ot the point. I want you to tell me the whereabouts of Matsuda Fukurou.”

  
Her strange father’s eyes suddenly sharpened, and he rested his chin against an elegant hand. “Who do you mean, Medaka-chan? I thought you came here to blame me for arbitrarily hiring a ninja to follow you and then removing her from the job.”  
  
“I want to complain, but thanks to you I was able to meet SHiranui. The situation has changed now, the darkness enshrouding the Shiranui family is way more important.”  
  
“Let’s hear it…” Kaijki said. “Please start explaining.”  
  
Medaka sat on the other arm of the couch, because Junko refused to stop taking up the entire couch or look up fro her phone. After she finished the general explanation she gestured to Yasuke. “By the way, he’s the son of professor Matsuda Fukurou, Matsuda Yasuke. I think he if anyone has the right to know where the professor is…”  
  
“Is that so? Now that you mention it… He does resemble him. He’s got that same disdainful glare in his eyes.”  
  
How rude.  
Yasuke responded by glaring at Kaijiki with disdain.  
It seems this chapter is about going home and rediscovering family, found families, lost families, however I’m not interested in family at all. As a lonely bastard you can keep all that I found family where I least expected it plotlines to your self. I was born alone and I plan on dying alone.  
  
“I though my father died years ago before the Kamukura project could be completed, but there’s some evidence I survived. So I thought I would use the friendship between your daughter and Shiranui-san to find my father and came here hoping luck would be on my side. Please despise me.” An earnest request from the heart, because Matsuda was tired of people like him.  
  
“I came here following the advice of my dearly departed mentor hoping luck would be on my side and I could scam you out of some money, please despise me.”  
  
“I was dragged along, and I don’t really care so I’m just going to feud with randos on twitter while you guys are talking.” Junko said not looking up from her phone still. “Please whatever me.”  
  
“Do you two always act on such vague reasoning!”  
  
That man who always carried a pipe in his hands perhaps because he thought it looked made him look more mature slowly plaecd it down. Even with the bandage on his head, he managed to look authoritative for a moment. “Its useless. I definitely won’t tell you.”  
  
Medaka frowned. Her usually loud and defiant self was taken aback in silence.  
  
“That is my decision as the head of the Kurokami family, and as a daughter of the Kurokami you must follow it, Medkaa-chan.”  
  
“But why, father!? Is it because I love him as ‘another father’? Are you being mean to me because of that.”  
  
“Papapa! That’s indeed true too, but I’m not that cruel of a father as to be meant o you ust because of that. Consider the meaning of my choice to hide a ninja to guard you in the first place, then you should also know the reason why I don’t want to tell you where he is right?”  
  
Junko yawned from her position reclining. “Why don’t you just kill him? You know the only way to mature in works like this is to kill your father, right?”  
  
“You’re just mistaking eva for reality again.” Kumagawa said as he poked at her cheek.  
  
“Oh, my, my. Are you two already fighting despite meeting again after such a long time.” A woman with sickly looking eyes in a ballgown wandered into the room, smoking a long pipe. “Come on stop that, Kaijiki-san. A fatther fighting with his daughter doesn’t stand a chance to win anyway.”  
  
“Nashi-san, how long have you been?”  
  
“We haven’t ben in contact for a while, Nashi-kaasama. I see you made today your mother’s day.”  
  
“This family tree is so confusing.” Matsuda grumbled in the background.  
  
“Oh well basically, besides Medaka-chan’s mother Kajiki had six other wives that he married at the same time, kind of like Togami’s dad. That one specifically is Naze-san’s mother, but also Medaka-chan’s adoptive mother since her real one died.” Kumagawa explained in the background, having learned that fact from Zenkichi.  
  
“See! That could be so cool, but with Medaka-chan it’s lame somehow. She’s like super high school level boring, it’s a talent. She was born to destroy the world by killing it with boredom.” Junko whispered back at them.  
  
The family drama scene continued in front of the gossiping trio. “Don’t make that disgruntled face, when I heard you had returned I immediately returned here, Medaka-chan. What a lovable mother I am. Fufufu, well, well, anyway.It’s been a while since we last met, Medaka-chan. That really suits you, it’s almost as if you were her exact copy. No, I suppose it’s now more like looking at a ghost. Making her wear that memento kimono was in very bad taste, Kaijiki-san. You don’t have the right to criticize professor Kukurou, am I wrong?”  
  
Medaka hesitated for a moment, _memento kimono?_  
  
“It’s fine why don’t you let her do as she wants? I mean even if you don’t tell her she’ll find out by herself sooner or later. Therefore I think it’s best if you tell her already before something irreparable happens.”

“Junko look up from your phone there’s some serious rich person drama going on.” Kumagawa whispered, to her.  
  
“No,” She whispered back.  
  
“Please be silent, Nashi-san. I don’t know how danerous Shishime Iihiko really is but… if you ask me there’s no man whose more dangerous than Matsuda Fukurou himself.”  
  
“...”

“What will you do then? Will you stubbornly defy the decision of the head? Will you abandon the Kurokami name like Kujira-chan did and leave the family?”  Kajiki asked, smoking his pipe in what he must have thought was a mature and fatherly way while he asked it.  
  
“No, father… I’ll actually do the opposite.” Medaka stood up, as if to make a dramatic declaration.  
  
“Umm, who said you could stand up and make a dramatic declaration? Does this scene revolve around you?” Junko said suddenly, finally looking up from her phone.  
  
“Junko, we’re literally at my family house I think this scene is about-”  
  
“Were you about to do something lame and predictable like ascend to the family head early so you could get the information? Gosh, all of this coolness really is wasted on somebody predictable like you. There’s ways to get things besides sacrificing yourself, sacrificing others for example.” Junko finished a series of rapid taps on her phone which made extra noise due to the her long red nails. “Hey, old man tell us the information you want to know or else I won’t stop.”  
  
“Won’t stop what…?”  
  
Suddenly, a servant bust into the room unannounced. “Kurokami-sama! The stock market is plummeting! We’re losing money by the second. The Togamis are leveraging the oppurtunity to try to buy up our assets.”  
  
At that, Enoshima Junko smiled. “My plan to bankrupt the great Togami empire and Kurokami empire in less than a year. You can probably stop it if you know somebody smarter than me, which you probably don’t.” Junko said with a yawn before turning her attention back to her phone. “The look on his face wasn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be, that took like ninety whole seconds to enact that plan that’s like forever in Junko time.”

After that threat was levied, Medaka’s father crumpled much easier than he made it sound like he would. I hate to admit Junko is right, it literally pains me to do so, but those who build themselves up on high towers like that tend to be the easiest to get to fall. Usually by pushing them off. Exaclty how I tried to kill Junko beore, which tells you how incompetent I am for not pulling it off.  
  
As they walked out Kumagawa was smiling. “I can’t believe Junko did something useful for once.”  
  
“Umm, what’s with that for once? I don’t want to hear that from you,loser boy. I’m useful way more times than you are.” Junko said.  
  
Suddenly, Medaka surprised her from behind wrapping her arms around her. “See, I am a part of the group! You actually like me, don’t you?”  
  
“I was literally planning on tricking your family into killing each other and burning their empire to the ground, did you pay attention to anything I did back there?”  
  
“You know after I become friends with Shiranui, I can become friends with you too, Enoshima!”  
  
“Did you literally listen to anything I just said? You rich fraud with legs for days!”

“You can struggle all you want, there’s no way to escape the hug I’m stronger than you, and you’re too short to get any leverage even in those heels.”  
  
“Why are you so tall, you stupid sexy giraffe!”

Matsuda and Kumagawa could only watch the two interact with mixed fascination and horror as they continued to bicker like that.

 

😈

 

That morning Mukuro woke up early because it was what she was used to doing. As she saw Makoto sprawled out in the bed next to her, drooling in his sleep, she wondered how such a cute looking face was not already taken by the time she fell in love with him. Someone as cute as Makoto should have been the most popular boy in the school by her opinion. She could see somebody with his looks easily becoming a playboy.  
  
She wandered to the kitchen looking for something to do to make herself useful. By the time she got there though, Komaru had already been awake and making food.  
  
“What’s up, were you hoping or an opportunity to train and become a housewife in the future?”  
  
“Oh, I already know how to cook. My sister can’t cook, clean or do anything for herself basically so I always had to wake up in the morning and take care of all of that for her.”  
  
“What’s your favorite food.”  
  
“Military rations- I mean, ra, ra, radish, horse radish. And radishes. Yes, that.” Mukuro said, thinking she had saved that one. “I can help if you-”  
  
“It’s fine you’re a guest in our house aren’t you? It’s normal for us to make breakfast for you.”  
  
As Mukuro patiently waited the scene in front of her did not seem real at all. Rather it looked like it should belong in some painting frame, or only appear on tv. She watched Komaru humming as she tried to cook in the foreground, and in the background Makoto lazily rubbed at his eyes and walked to the kitchen table with his hair still messed up from bedhead.  
  
He sat at the table like it was the most natural thing to do in the world. Like he belonged there, which, of course he did. It was Mukuro who did not belonging this scene, so she sat still at the edge of it watching it while standing up, completely stiff like a statue.  
  
It was a scene she had witnessed in her dreams plenty of times over and over again. Waking up to a household that called her name in the morning, cooked for her, and sitting down to eat a family meal while chatting and laughing at nothing in particular. Even though her parents were both basically normal, they were not family. The only family she had was a sister who would never take part in such a scene.  
  
Even in her dreams Mukuro felt guilty, for imagining a normal sister, laughing carelessly over a family breakfast, rather than the sister she had. The time she lived alone with Junko, the time at Fenrir, Mukuro could only ever remember eating alone. She had started to doubt scenes like his could really even exist, maybe families were only that close in manga and every family in the world was broken in some way.

If there was no such thing as normal, then perhaps she could continue denying that her own normal was so messed up. She could deny her desire for the normal that everybody else had.

Mukuro blinked for a moment, and she was back to the days where she made food for her sister, but not for herself and then ate alone somewhere else. She blinked and returned to the days she ate away from the rest of Fenrir, shoving military rations into her mouth as quickly as possible. She remembered when her own parents did not bother to make meals for her, just handing her money and telling her to buy food for both her and her sister. When they were younger than this… much younger… there  might have been a time that Junko and her ate together. She could not have been more than primary school age. No, even at that time Junko had run off with Matsuda and left her alone to eat her half of the shared lunch.

  
This kind of thing it was unfair for her to desire though. Because she knew, the people she had killed among them were children with families just like this who ate breakfast just like this. Some of them could have even been parents. Now, when they ate breakfast all together, there would be a hole in that room. That hole would be because Mukuro had torn it apart, she had torn apart such a precious thing without thinking at all about it. No, perhaps she had known and chose to destroy it anyway, because just like her sister and was petty and destroyed what other people had and she never could.  
  
She had torn apart so many normal, happy family meals like this, for no reason at all. How could she sit among them now, like none of that never happened? There were probably plenty of people in the world who had bad families, and went through life empty because of that but they did not go so far as destroying other people’s families. It was just her. She was the worng element, she was what did not belong. If she sat in between those two, one day they might be torn apart too. Such a happy scene would be destroyed by the hands of despair, all a despair sister, all she was capable of.  
  
She hesitated, hiding in the corner of the room not wanting to approach it any further. Even gazing at it afar seemed wrong of her. The worst part was. The dreams that haunted her every night. The dreams of a happy family that she could never have. A normal family that sat together, talked, and joked around.  
  
She did not dream of that at all last night. Instead, she had woken up to that exact same dream in her reality. Getting to eat with Makoto’s family, like she was just a normal girl being introduced to his sister, like she had a chance to become a part of that family one day. 

No, perhaps this was a dream and she would awake and nothing had ever changed. No Kumagawa, no Makoto, she was just with her sister again as always waiting in the bunker for a year to pass before they could wipe the memories of her classmates, her only taste of normalcy, and force them all to kill each other.  
  
After all she was easily convinced to help kill her classmates that meant the world to her and made her feel things she had never felt before. How easily could she be turned against that scene right in front o her. Yes, if she were to wake up right now and be next to Junko again, to be in that world where only JUnko and pain existed for her, than that would be exactly what she deserved.  
  
Yet no longer how much she waited, she refused to wake up. That scene in front of her remained real. Eventually Makoto turned his head back to look at her. “Yo, Bunny your eggs are getting cold.”  
  
“You two have pet nicknames, how gross. None of that at the breakfast table please. It’s banned!”  
  
Mukuro sat down, but the moment she looked at the eggs in front of her tears welled in the corner of her eyes. She was not even the one to realize it. It was Komaru, watching her to see if her brother’s girlfriend liked her cooking when she saw a stream of tears start falling down the side of her otherwise emotionless face.  
  
“Yo, big bro what did you do to her she’s crying…”  
  
“Eh? I didn’t do anything!”

“I can’t… I don’t deserve this… I’m.sorry.” As she said that, Mukuro quickly excused herself and ran to the bathroom.

“Umm, was my cooking really that bad?” Komaru immediately looked at her brother. “Okay, be honest with me. She’s some kind of child soldier or something right?”  
  
“H-h-how did you know?”  
  
“I mean you have normal stats at everything except being a liar, and somehow she’s even worse. Just because I’m boring and normal doesn’t mean I’m unobservant. How did you even end up with a girl like that- wait never mind, don’t want to vomit my breakfast back up by asking details about my brother’s love life.”  
  
“Thank you.” Makoto said weakly back.  
  
“I’m not really sure I could go out and befriend a murderer, but you know what you do you brother.”  
  
“Who knows, you might meet one, one day.”  
  
“Don’t jynx me like that bad luck boy, I don’t want to meet anyone scary like that.” Komaru said, tilting her head to the side. “Well, that girl seems kind of scary but she’s also scared about everything else at the same time. It’s weird… and complicated, I dunno. If this were a shoujo manga though, it’d definitely be you whose the normal everyday heroine whose trying to save the heart of the angsty bad boy.”  
  
“Why does everybody keep calling me a heroine?” Makoto complained, before looking in the direction Mukuro had gone. “Do you like her? It would mean a lot to her if you did.”  
  
“I guess. We always end up liking the same things don’t we? Except for Togami, I don’t get what you see in that guy.”  
  
“He’s the best!”  
  
“I hope I don’t have to end up dealing with another Togami fan.”  
  
“That’s a weirdly specific statement.”  
  
“Anyway, go after her! I know you’re lame, but making her wait for this long so you can get encouragement from your sister is super lame!” Komaru said, pointing at him now. “Look bro maybe you think things are weird between you because she’s such an abnormal girl, and you met under odd circumstances but think of it this way. There’s six billion uninteresting people on earth, and she somehow by some chance met you. The odds were already extraordinary from the start, so everything else is ordinary by comparison. Even if she’s weird, you’re so good at being a boring nobody, you’re so normally normal, it’ll probably just rub off on her eventually.”  
  
“Was that supposed to be encouraging because it feels like those compliments were backhanded.”  
  
“Just go already!”  
  
“Yes, going!” Makoto said, realizing the more he hesitated the longer Mukuro would be left alone. He finally found her in the bathroom, nudging the door open after knocking. She had made a small ball of herself in the corner.  
  
Wolves were pack animals by nature, so there was somethin especially odd and sad about a lone wolf.  
  
Makoto did not do anything especially bold, he did not make a big declaration of love as both of those things were against his nature. He really only became bold when emboldened by circumstance. He merely sat down next to her, being right there with her in that moment. He might have been somebody who could be replaced by anybody else in this world, but he was the one who made the choice to be next to her at that moment.  
  
Mukuro had chosen him, out of everybody else. She was the first person to see him as anything special, for something so simple as smiling to her, which he would do for anybody. So, this was the least he could do for her. Choosing her in return.  
  
“I’m sorry. It’s just you’re doing so much for me and I don’t deserve any of it. I think there’s a reason I never got a normal family meal growing up, it’s because they knew I was going to become a bad person, somebody who didn’t deserve that.”  
  
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me.” Makoto said, his voice clearer than usual his hesitation gone. “I wanted you here because I was doubting myself. I wanted to introduce you to my sister, because I wanted my girlfriend to get along with my family. You’re not imposing on anyone, you’re not a burden, this is what I want.”  
  
He said, clear as always.  
  
“...Why me?”

At this point Makoto usually said that everybody deserved happiness, arguments tailored to give everybody a chance to be saved, something he truly did want. However in that moment Mukuro was not a part of everybody. She was a separate entity, she was Mukuro.  
  
“Mukuro you might not know this but I love you. Even if you do become a criminal for what you’ve done and end up in jail, I’ll still visit you everyday. But I want to be with you all the time. Sometimes I don’t know why I’m dating you. But I love you so much, I don’t need a reason. If you’re going somewhere, let’s go together. I’ll protect you and you’ll protect me.”  
  
“So cool.”  
  
“You’re shy, but bold when you need to be. You’re weak, but still strong enough to have endured until this point. You’re always frowning but you have such a pretty smile. You have no idea how to talk to anybody, but you say just the right thing when I need it. You’re basically everything to me. Maybe, someone else could have become this important, in different circumstances, but it was you who made the choice to become my important person. Do you regret that?”  
  
“No…”  
  
The only thing in her life she did not regret.  
Even if it brought her pain it was the good kind of pain.  
Annoying, every day pain, that you could endure as long as you had that person by your side.   
  
“So I want you to be here, for my sake.” He held a hand out to her. “Let’s go eat breakfast together, or else Komaru will yell at me for making you cry.”

“But I don’t deserve-”  
  
“Even if you were in prison they’d be serving you a normal boring breakfast that you’d eat with other prisoners right? Everybody on earth eats meals, you’re just a person at the end of the day. It’s okay to be a person Mukuro.”  
  
“It’s heavy…”  
  
“I know, but I’m here with you.”  
  
Taking her hand, even though he was weak he helped her up.  
Mukuro tried her best, but she ended up crying the entire time as they were eating.  
And Makoto got yelled at and blamed by his sister for making her cry.


	28. Born to Destroy the World

When Medaka finally asked what had happened to her kindly uncle Kaiki Deishuu who promised if she was in need he would work for her free of charge, Kumagawa pulled her aside and admitted rather easily.  It was an unexpectedly honest confession with him, when he used his normal voice it was overly honest, and somehow his honesty and his serious voice felt more deceiptful than his lies. A liar seems most suspect when they're telling the truth, what bitter irony. Source Matsuda: I would know I'm an expert on bitterness. 

"I killed him. He died because I was weak." 

The same way Medaka was always killing others with her strength. Medaka wanted to do something about the loss of the uncle she had only met once, but she could not bring herself to punish Misogi for committing the same crime as her. The same but opposite. That had always been their relationship, he was weak and she was strong. 

What in the world is meant by strength? Similar to the basis of fortune and misfortune, if we consider strength and weakness is simply a matter of personal perception, then one argument could be made that rejecting everything other than yourself is strength, and supporting everything other than yourself is weakness. And if that is not the case, when you decide on something, then you require a basis and intervals.  
  
Is this simple strength? Or perhaps it is a large existence? Or perhaps physical durability, or perhaps mental durability? Those who stand at the top of the stairs disdaining others cannot be called the strongest. Yet, being able to perform every task, being talented in every skill, simply merits being called an all arounder and not in the high end. Perfecting a single ability becomes simply a single genius. It is not acquiring what you want, nor the ability to eradicate all. Undefeated and invisible alone does not point toward the strongest. Honor and pride are both rational. Then, what exactly, what is similar, wat is equal, and how can one determine one to be the strongest - the more you think about it,the more you end up in a thesis of your own making.  
  
Yet, if you put forth these reasonings, he would probably flash a nihilist smile as always, and answer like this-  
『 _I am the weakest, and therefore anyone other than me is stronger, I don’t need a reason. I’ll just devour anyone stronger than me._ 』

In the group right now there was someone who was too weak, someone who was too strong, someone who was too smart, and a smartass. That’s me Yasuke.  
  
“Hey, do you guys want to hear the super embarrassing edgy thing that Yasuke’s been saying lately?” Kumagawa spoke up suddenly as they were walking back.  
  
“No!” Yasuke denied immediately.  
  
“We shouldn’t mention it if he’s embarrassed.” Medaka was a good girl.  
  
“Yes, obviously.” Junko was the worst.  
  
“When I asked him to be his friend he went ‘I don’t need friends, they’ll lower my intensity as a human being. They’ll weaken me.’ Isn’t he a tool?”  
  
At which point the rest of the group started to laugh, and Yasuke, that’s me, the tool, found his belief that he did not belong in groups of people like this completely validated. Laugh all you want idiots, but in the end I’m the narrator so you can’t stop me from constantly quipping with a smug sense of superiority.  
  
What I said was true though. Because I’m the narrator I get to set all the themes. I’m just going to tell them to you now, there’s no reason to play coy with the. Theme 1: Junko Sucks. Theme 2: I also suck. Weaving a narrative around these elaborate themes is hard work I hope you appreciate my labors.  
  
However, my statements are not just substanceless edge. It’s edge with substance. Just like Nietzsche. In fact he just high fived me. That’s true because I said it and I’m the narrator and narrators never lie.

People who are weak tend to band together because they depend on each other, and therefore the opposite is true as well, the strong are isolated and it’s assumed they can do everything on their own. That’s why technically I’m stronger than Zenkichi even though he has all those rippling ab muscles, and those strong arms, and that chiseled chin of his… what was I narrating about again?  
  
For the strong and talented, it’s assumed they can handle everything on their own. Not only that, they also believe they should be capable of that. That’s why they tend to isolate themselves. Kurokami Medaka was so strong and quick at learning that from two years old, she was studied, she was consulted on math problems, she was given books to read, but not a single adult around her saw her as a child. At two years old they already assumed she could do everything all on her own.  
  
Just so you know, Kurokami lives alone. When she was still in middle school, she solved some crazy math problem called the juggling theorem and because of that, she got a lot of money. She attained that money to live separately from the family home, that felt like nothing more than a funeral casket, a box for her to dwell in, and not a home at all. To Medaka who holds money she might never spend in all her life, after acquiring the money to live alone it should have been simple.  
  
Just so you know, Junko actually solved that problem before Medaka. She was not planning to use the money to move out, instead she wanted to use the money to build a death ray. Ummm, because like why hasn’t anybody tried to build a death ray like in the movies Yasuke-kun? Tesla wrote out the blueprints for a prototype they’re like right there somebody should try. How did I not notice she was evil again? Oh right love makes you stupid. Well she kept going back and forth between wanting shoes and a death ray, but the commission refused to take her answer even though it was right because she did not show her work. She complained for like a week straight afterwards. Apparently the answer was two but she still won’t tell me how she got it.

When Kurokami who was smarter than all the adults around her moved out, everyone assumed she would be just fine living on her own. However things like laundry, cooking, washing, dressing, those were things that servants had taken care of her all of her life. And there was one thing that being good at everything she had ever attempted had failed to tach Medaka and that was how to ask for help.  
  
Within a month the beautiful and perfect Medaka was living in a home covered in bagged up trash. The sink was overflowing with dishes and some of them were broken on the floor not swept up. The food had run out awhile ago, and what was left was rotted. She could have subsisted off of convenience store food, but Medaka had no idea those existed because she had never visited one before.

Medaka had not even shown up to school in the past two weeks, but nobody bothered to check on her. Even her childhood friend assumed that she had gone off on some kind of adventure she could not bring him along with, like she was fighting aliens on the moon or something, that seemed in the scope of Kurokami medaka the girl who could do anything.  
  
Even in middle school that girl who was dedicated to helping everyone else, did not know how to help herself. That was why Medaka was overly righteous, so righteous that it was rotten and disgusting. The hope that she spread to others became a poison that was slowly eating away at herself. Living alone with no idea how to take care of herself, Medaka had woken up for the past three mornings and simply rolled around in bed and tried to all asleep again due to the sleep she failed to get last night. I believe the kids call that getting depressed, but when you’re a super brilliant and super eccentric girl like Kurokami or Enoshima it’s different somehow.  
  
Kurokami was smarter than most adults by the time she was two years old. That was why nobody treated her like a child, nobody even bothered to raise her, even to her father she was a precious piece of property to be guarded. Like she was a kind of high efficiency computer,  a data processing machine, he gave her anything she desired and watched her process and output it. It’s not like he raised her though, he just funded her, built an environment around her… there’s a difference and she didn’t know how to describe it. Because she had no experience with parents. But one time she saw Zenkichi scrape his knee and start to cry, and his mother sat with him and let him cry even after she bandaged up the knee. Medaka was sure in her case she would never fall in the first place, but if she did she would be told not to cry because if she hurt herself too badly her father would just hire the world’s best doctor to take care of it. It was the waiting around for them that made the difference, giving your child air, the freedom to cry even if it showed weakness. Because the child’s emotions were separate from your own and they needed to express it, they needed to go through the pain of the scraped knee.  
  
There was no air in her home. It was just a casket. She would live beautifully in the Kurokami Mansion, and she would die beautifully there, but she would never be given the chance to grow on her own. It was like being raised as livestock, everything about her was controlled from day one to grow up in the most efficient way possible. When pets and livestock escaped into the wild, they almost certainly died, because they never had to fend for themselves and everything was provided for them by their owners.  
  
That was it right now, that was why even trying to break away from that test tube she was raised in, she did not know how to do a single thing for herself. That was right it was probably wrong for her to be born in the first place, somebody who never struggled, somebody whose birth killed her own mother, so a slow passive death like this was probably something she deserved. They would find her corpse like the corpse of a starved escaped cattle in the desert, her bones might even be plucked dry by coyotes. Her one wish was that she hoped Zenkichi would not be the one to find her like this, she was still a girl after all, she did not want to see her dying in such an uncute way.

Then suddenly, as her eyelids were starting to get heavy the door opened in front of her. A man appeared.  
  
“No one came to help you? No one even noticed? That must’ve hurt… RIght, Kurokami Medaka?”  
  
His hand appeared in front of her, reaching out to her.  
  
“You’re just a little girl after all. Did everybody just forget that because of how smart you were?”

A man in a lab coat appeared before her out of nowhere. His hair was slicked back. He definitely looked like an adult, but the way he was acting was strange,unfamiliar.  
  
“Come on let’s get you some food. There’s no reason to starve yourself, you’re just some growing girl, not the budha.”  
  
Because she was too weak to move on her own from hunger, for the first time she rode on the back of someone else. The shoulders were broad and wide, they were definitely an adult’s shoulders. He took her to a restaurant with cheap food and she ate all of it, and then vomitted it up because it had been too much for her to eat all at once and even then with the same patient smile he held her hair back while she puked and said it would be alright. They could eat rice back at her home afterwards.  
  
The trash was cleaned up by the two of them working together. Even though she could do it all on her own, he insisted on helping her carry some of the bags. They swept away the plates she had broke and bought new ones together, and he showed her not only what stores to go to, but also how to buy these things online. At first he did her laundry for her, but then he allowed her to watch while sitting on the drier as he showed her how to do it. That man simply took the time to teach her what everybody else thought she could simply figure out how to do on her own, and even when she turned out better than him at it he kept staying around her. He kept just doing what he wanted to do, even when she was better at him than things, even when she read faster. He would hand her books, and when she noticed something that he did not he simply laughed and said he would have to read it again and try to catch it next time.

When she came home from school he suggested she study, even if she got the material right away. He said she could have fun going over it, even if she learned it in a flash. That studying could be like meditation to her. People sometimes went to the same park twice, or climbed the same mountain twice, because they wanted to enjoy the familiarity of the view. When she studied, he would even bring her snacks. Her textbooks and notebooks became well worn, her pristine apartment because messy again but instead of trash, the signs of human activity, the signs of living accumulated there. He suggested she go to cram school even though it was unnecessary for her, just so she had more things to do to occupy her time, and so she might meet more people and be exposed to more new experiences.  
  
The middle school assignments that she did not care about at all became fun for the first time. Reading was fun, writing was fun, it was more than just an effortless bore. Because she had someone to share it with. An adult who would not feel inferior when she showed her accomplishments to them, he would just laugh and say she did a good job. One time she told him his life’s work studying talent at Hope’s Peak Academy was very impressive, she could probably analyze all that data in about three hours, and all he did was laugh and say. _Somebody’s excited. Did something good happen to you?_  
  
Medaka being better than him did not seem to affect him at all, as he enjoyed his work. Somebody being better than him did not undervalue his work. In fact he did not even seem to notice or look at her talent, all he saw was an overexcited child.  
  
That was how Kurokami began living with Matsuda Fukurou. Her ‘Other Father’, the person she saw as a father in her middle school years. That taste of a normal life, with a normal adult, was like anesthesia to her, she began to weaken just a little bit and depend on others, she started to wish those days with Fukurou would last forever. That was why she did not notice, the predatory shine in the owl eyed man’s eyes. She never noticed that the work he enjoyed so much was unsavory.

 

😈

 

Medaka had been reminiscing on the past, because the feeling of weakness she felt around this small group of kids right now, simply talking and laughing about nothing it reminded her of the weakness she allowed herself to feel in the past.  
  
Her reminiscing was suddenly cut short by a red blaze appearing out of nowhere in the horizon. That red blaze uickly became a red streak, and she saw a red Mustang Cobra was speeding along the countryside road in the middle of nowhere. Because it was such an abandoned road with no traffic, they had taken their time getting back and decided to walk their bicycles rather than ride on them.  
  
The next moment the red car slammed into Kumagawa throwing him in the air. He ragdolled like they were in a video game. She had let her guard down for a moment, and this happened. “H… hey, watch out, she might hit somebody that matters next.” Matsuda was the first to notice.  
  
The red convertible stopped. The woman as red as the car she was driving, kicked the door open and stomped out with no hesitation at all. She was red, so red one could tell from five kilometers away, when she had suddenly appeared from nowhere like a lightning bolt on the horizon.  
  
Overkill red, the crimson woman, she wore a red jacket, red boots up to her thighs, and red glasses and a red look in her eyes. To contrast this, one of her bangs was styled into the shape of a bolt of lightning, and it fell dead center in her face, almost perfectly centered. To Kumagawa who had fallen onto the round dizzy, and with minor scratches the moment he tried to get up, that woman raised her leg without hesitation and slammed it into his back, twisting the heel of her boot into the base of his spine as she grabbed his hair to lift his head.  
  
“ You really don’t close your eyes or flinch at all when you’re hurt. Pretty damn cool. Bad ass even. Well okay. Hello.”  
  
“Please never do that again. It’s only sexy when Junko drives her heels into her backs and manhandles me, this is just petty harassment.”  
  
“Did I tell you you could talk? Your way too thin you know, your back is all boney and it’s uncomfortable to step on like this.”  
  
“A typical elite. Whining about how hard it is to step on insignificant people like me so they can climb even higher and higher.”  
  
“Did you say something? I don’t speak loser, so I can’t hear the whining prattles of one.”  
  
“Juuuuunkoooo! I’m being bullied! The love of your life is being bullied!” Kumagawa whined, giving up entirely.  
  
Junko tilted her head watching from the side. “What are you talking about? That strange red and yellow, fire type and electricity type pokemon gym leader lady isn’t harassing me.”  
  
“Junko!”  
  
“Oh, you’re right she kind of looks more like an elite four member instead, oh wait no Carmen Sandiego! That's a better insult I should have gone with that.”  
  
The only one who seemed to be in the moment was Kurokami Medaka. From a young age every animal had been terrified with her, animals knew nothing about personality at all, they could only detect strength. In the same way, she knew nothing at all about the woman in front of her, just that she was strong, she had no idea how she used that strength, instinctual fear. “Who… are you?”  
  
“My name’s Aikawa Jun”  
  
“Aikawa-san.”  
  
“Call me Jun.”  
  
“Um, Jun have we met before?”  
  
“First time.”  
  
“What, didn’t your father tell you anything?” She moved her foot off on Kumagawa’s back, and drove her heel into his head instead. “The moment your father let you escape, he hired me to make sure you could never reach your objective. To bring you back to him, and arrest the girl Enoshima Junko who was a bad influence on your and had committed conspiracy and insider trading.”  
  
“So what he’s butthurt because I caused a tiny little catastrophic stock market crash? It’s his fault for piling that money so high in the first place. It’s like when the humans build the tower of babel, it was an offense to god, they were just asking for it to get torn down.” Junko interrupted in the background, still not really a part of the moment probably because of the whole raging god complex thing.  
  
“When he called me, I just so happened to be close by that I could drop the job and immediately head over, and then your luck was even worse because I ran into you on the road just by chance. I blew my entrance because of you. I never even had an entrance! You’d better make it up to me.”  
  
She introduced herself then. With the same amount of confidence that Izuko Gaen said she knew everything. A nihilist smile. “A, private detective, no private contractor. Right now, I’m just playing a boring job as delivery girl, and you two girls are the package. A pissant little job I can solve in less than a minute, but you’re nearby and I’m making stacks on stacks on stacks for this so whatever. Aikiawa Jun, humanity’s strongest.”  
  
At that moment she reached forward to Kurokami Medaka. Kumagawa who had been nothing more than a helpless doll underneath her foot, suddenly disappeared underneath her. The next oent she looked down and saw a shadow rising up. Pushing himself off the ground he now attempted the imporbable attack from this angle that was an uppercut. She threw back her body at last moment and saw his fist sail past her face. She kicked his side sending him rolling across the ground before he finally came to a stop in front of Medaka.  
  
At this Kumagawa smiled as he stood up on his own once more in front of Medaka. “Get over yourself.” He said, smiling with completely unearned confidence. A boy with nothing was smiling with the same confidence Aikawa had. “I get hit by a car at least once a week, meeting you isn’t a once in a lifetime event. It’s tuesday. Only teenagers are allowed to be this self important, when someone over twenty does it it’s just tacky.”  
  
“You sure like taking a hit, huh?” Aikiawa responded with the same smile. “When it looked like I was going for someone else though, you immediately stood up all on your own. Cool. Manly even.”

“Well-”  
  
“A fool, a natural villain, a natural hero, and a loner. If only I had caught you with more of your friends around then it might have been more of an even fight, I really do have the worst luck-”  
  
“Hey! I’m talking. I just told you, it’s only cute when Junko dominates the conversation entirely to her whims. When an adult does that they’re just failing at being a person.”  

“You don’t really seem like the guy to be lecturing other people on failure.”  
  
“Oh, but I am! I’m the most experienced with failure! I’m the human failure! I’m basically an expert. That’s why I can see it in everybody else. You know what they say, about looking into the abyss, and the abyss looking back. It’s not my fault I can look at you like this, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, you looked first.” He smiled at her, waving his hand in an exaggerated motion in front of her face. “But no, no, no before you say anything I wasn’t going to convince you to leave us alone. I actually don’t care that much, if you want to beat Yasuke-chan and I up and leave us on the side of the road, and then drag Junko and Medaka-chan back to the mansion by their hair go ahead. Whether we get away, or whether you win, each result matters the same to me, which is to say it doesn’t matter at all.” Kumagawa Misogi took a bow, giving hs speech an intermission.   
  
“Hey, don’t go speaking for all of us! It matters to me whether some red haired lady stomps my face into pulp, I’ve had enough of that for one lifetime, oh, two lifetimes.” Matsuda inerjected to complain.   
  
At that point he started up again, smiling. "However, if you do that you won’t have any fun at all. It’s boring to do what you know you can do, and having everything go exactly as predicted just following the rails is even more boring. If you win an easy victory like that, I’d be unhappy, because I know at that moment you wouldn’t smile at all. I won’t be able to see your sincere happiness when you win. I mean I guess it’ll make you look like a badass, when you defeat us without breaking a sweat or even emoting, but that isn’t any fun.”  
   
“....” Jun observed him closely.   
  
“I don’t really know what happiness feels like. I don’t know whether the happiness I feel now is really a smile. But I want other people to smile. Maybe if they do that, then one day I’ll be able to believe in my own smile. That’s why an ending like that where nobody smiles is no good for me.”

In just a few moments of observation, Jun already reached her conclusion. “Would a man with no personal experience with happy smiles and no idea who I am be able to give them to others? To me?”  
  
Kumagawa was not done performing though, a shadowy look on his face he got clsoser and closer to her. “I see. That would mean that everything I’m doing now is pointless, built on self satisfaction… I’d say that’s pretty funny wouldn’t you?” As he said that, the curve of his mouth grew even more cheerful. “Well anyway that’s my argument, there’s no reason for you to do it, but that’s why you should. Instead of just winning right now, you should let us escape and give us time to prepare for you. That way, you might be able to smile when you actually win… without lives on the line. Games are just no fun. Insurance for anything and everything is so boring.”

 Jun did not even seem to notice the lack of personal space, or perhaps she did not notice him. “You seem like a lucky guy. You really thought I’d buy a half assed speech like that?”  
  
“What’s wrong with being half ass? Ass is great. Any portion of the ass is good. Even if you’re only holding onto it with one hand instead of two it’s still a good feeling. Um, what were we talking about again I got distracted. Ah right, Jun-chan. That’s my offer. Let us go and come chasing after us later, and then it can be a game.”

“Aikawa-san. I want my enemies to call me Aikawa-san.”  
  
“Aikawa-san! I’m not lying or anything, it just doesn’t matter to me anymore. Enemy or ally, hero or villain, win or lose, I’m tired of it, I just want to see a smile.”  
  
“Alright, then let’s try it. I’ll let myself be deceived by you. If I’m as selfish and egotistical as you say then I’ll play along for the sake of my own fun. Next time I come though I’m not going to hold back, I might do self reflection, but I don’t do self restraint. That’s one of my charm points. If you corner me I’ll lose, and if I corner you guys then you admit your loss and come willingly.”  Jun decided in that moment. It was seamless to her, like recalculating a math problem.   
  
“Of course, giving up is one of my few strong points.” Kumagawa said.  
_  
_ Just like that, overkill red turned around and left. With the swagger of her hips, the elegant step in her heels, she made getting bored and quitting look unbelievably stylish. It was history’s coolest moment of ‘I’m taking my ball and going home”, it would live on in legend forever.  
  
“Jeez, making meta jokes even as an adult. What nonsense.”  
  
Kumagawa’s brightness darkened the moment she left. He exhaled and all swagger escaped from him.

“I can’t believe that worked. I had literally no idea what I was saying. I was just bluffing.”

As he said that, he collapsed forward. It was Junko who caught him.He took up her one eyed perspective of the world from so close. “Loserboy, how are you even real?”

“I am real.” Kumagawa said, breathless. “I’m right here leaning against you aren’t I? Don’t say stupid things.”  
It seemed he had misunderstood the expression, but Junko could see why.  
“She seemed a little bit like Anshin’in-san, so I started pretending to be cool again without even realizing it. I guess it made me sad.”  
  
Kumagawa was so blatant with his emotions like always. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and it was a bleeding heart, getting his messy blood everywhere, all over her. Junko did not mind though. In fact, she was angry at herself again, because even in this moment all she could do was stand still against him, like she was just a block of ice he was melting. It was tedious, glaciers moved at notoriously slow paces she did not want to be one of those, or an iceberg, or a tundra, something that would be still and frozen forever.  
  
She could not even say a single thing to him, or raise a single hand for him when he was speaking about his emotions so clearly.  
  
Matsuda looked away from the scene, fed up with third wheeling already and the day was not even over. “Medaka-chan, you haven’t said anything loud and obnoxious in awhile are you okay?”  
  
He hoped the insults would hide his concern.  
  
“That lady just now. She was like me. That’s not, that’s never, there’s never been anyone on my level. That was weird.”

“Umm, hello there’s me.” Junko said.  
  
“Enoshima you’re always talking about how you’re out of my league.”  
  
“Yeah, because I am?”  
  
“An overly powerful woman, an overwhelming presence that stops over everything in her path, arrogant, angry at the whole world or not being up to her standards. That’s me isn’t it?”

“Hey, don’t suddenly get self aware that’s my thing! You can’t have it because it’s mine!” Junko snapped at her, not reading the mood of the moment at all.  
  
Kurokami medaka did not even hear Junko’s interruptions though, because she had been forced to look at herself. She loved all of humanity, she would look at all of them no matter how ugly their deeds or words were, but she did not want to be forced to look at herself again, the one human being she hated.

 

😈

 

“Amazing! You can get all this food at a store around the corner? And for so cheap too! How are poor people even poor?”  
  
The princess Medaka asked thoughtlessly why the poor didn’t just eat cake, or in this case potato chips and microwavable food. With the money on hand she bought an entire shelf’s worth of snacks, and started to shove them into her face to think.  
  
When all four of the teenagers regrouped in the convenience store parking lot, Medaka looked to Junko first. “This is simple. We should just work together. You’re smarter than anyone and I’m stronger than anyone, if we work together we’ll win easily.”  
  
“Yeah no. No, no, no, never.” Junko crossed her arms dramatically to pose with that statement.  
  
“I think you like me, Junko. You just crashed the stock market in order to help me. So why are you so tsundere about it?”  
'  
“Ugh, I used to love making tsundere jokes too and now I gotta add that to the list of stuff that’s been ruined forever for me.” Junko took a step back. “I just did that because I was bored.”

“You can’t just say ‘I’m bored’ as an excuse for everything. I’m bored of that excuse.”  
  
“Try me.” She said sticking her tongue out as she turned around on her heel, and walked away. There was nowhere to go though so she just walked to the other end of the curb and sat down.  
  
Disappointed, Medaka looked back to Matsuda. “I don’t get it, little brother. Everything would go so much better if people just listened to me when I know what’s best. We’d get the good end.”

“Look Medaka…” He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, his unruly hair falling in front of his eyes. “It’s like how you call me little brother. Maybe I would be happier, if I found a new family after being orphaned like that. But… in the past Junko became my family, the family that found me, and that was used to hurt me and I don’t want to take that risk again.”  
  
“But you should. If you don’t you’ll only keep hurting alone.”  
  
“Yeah, well that’s my hurt to have! You can’t just decide that for me. I’m not… trying to be grumpy for once. Do you really want everybody in the world to act just like you? You don’t even like yourself that much. So don’t expect others to always listen to you and go with what you want, if you like people you gotta let them be people.”  
  
“That’s a good lesson, Matsuda-kun.” Medaka said, with a soft smile.  
  
“The lesson to be learned here today is people are terrible and I hate them. Jeez, when did I become such an optimist.” Scratching his head, he walked back into the store to go looking for the manga that was available in the magazine shelves.  
  
“Junko doesn’t really like anyone. Except for three people that she tortures. So, I think you two are fine.” Kumagawa said, smiling as usual. “You have a lot in common, you’re both smart, you both always expose your chests, you have childhood friends, you’re both stubborn, but you know in fifty two repetitions of the killing game you guys never really understood each other.”  
  
“That’s it. There’s fifty one versions of Junko I never met, because fifty one verions of myself forgot about it. I just need to remember.”  
  
“Wait, no Medaka-chan you should be careful. When Junko remembered her brain broke.”

“Okay yep maybe if I just think about it or a few minutes…” After that Medaka fell silent and intensely concentrated. Then her eyes widened and in that subtle gesture her shock was captured at seven years of memories being triggered to recall in her head at once. “Oh wow, that’s a doozy of despair. I think I need to sit down for at least two minutes to process all of this.”

“Well that figures. Good luck Medaka-chan, don’t break yourself.” Kumagawa followed after Matsuda to go annoy him, and also look at the manga at the same time.

As she sat down next to Junko, she wiped the tears from her face she had been unwittingly crying from unlocking those memories in her brain. Junko seemed to glare at her, and look with disdain at all the emotions she was showing so openly.  
  
“Junko, I think we should talk.”  
  
“Fine, we’re talking.”  
  
“Let me rephrase that, Junko I think we should talk without you trying to stab me.” At that moment, Kurokami Medaka had stopped a knife with her bare hands that Junko thrust at her the moment she asked to talk. She was lucky Junko stabbed the good side of her body with the nonbroken arm. Medaka flexed her fingers and the blade of the knife shattered to small pieces in her hand.  
  
“Show off.” Junko muttered.  
  
“And what part of you isn’t a showoff?”  
  
“Look I may be a hypocrite just pretending to wear human skin but at least I do it with style.”

“...Why aren’t you taking Jun-san’s attack seriously? If you got captured wouldn’t that be a boring end for you?”  
  
“Yeah, but winning because miss perfect perfectly pulled off my perfect plan is just too…”  
  
“Perfect?”  
  
“Yeah. Not interested.”  
  
“But you’re the plan girl. That’s your thing, you come up with plans and predict people’s actions. If we have time to plan ahead this is the one time you could be helpful to others.”  
  
“One, don’t tell people what their things are, my thing. Two, Misogi had a case of terminal dumb bitch disease, I have a case of terminal smart bitch disease, you’ve got a broken arm, and what is Yasuke-kun going to do to them? Brain surgery? It’s obviously so freaking hopeless.”  
  
“You know if you wanted me to be work out maybe you should have had a body builder kill my mom instead of a brain disease so I’d get buff and just beat him up for revenge!” Yasuke shouted from across the parking lot.  
  
Medaka blinked. “Dead moms? Doesn’t that seem like an insensitive thing to joke about?”  
  
“Look Medaka-chan, some people cope by telling terrible jokes. That doesn’t make us any more terrible than people who cope by crying like little babies.”  
  
“But you are terrible.”  
  
“Well yeah, I am, but like in theory if a person were to laugh instead of cry that doesn’t make it a less valid way of coping. I’m a very small sample size Medaka-chan, that’s bad science.”

Medaka had lost sight of the subject she wanted to talk about completely. Really, what a frustrating girl to deal with. Medaka wondered if even in her middle school days constantly fighting with Kumagawa that she ever was so frustrated by a person. “Are you mad at me? And you’re refusing to cooperate?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Because if so, that doesn’t really make sense. People usually hate me because I’m better than them at something and I stomp over all of their hard work but, you’re smarter than I am.”

“You’re an embodiment of hope, you’re all lovey dovey, you’re a boring girl who fights for boring reasons aka her friends. You’re basically everything I hate in a protagonist, that’s plenty enough reason to hate you.”  
  
“No it’s something more than that-”  
  
“Fifty two times. We went through that loop fifty two times and I only told Misogi I loved him once. You know what I think, that time around was just a fluke and if we had gone a full one hundred, or even one thousand I still would have only told him once. Even the way he had to hear it, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I love you, and even now when I say it, it’s only to manipulate him, or to make him miserable. That’s the kind of person I am.” Junko said, turning her face away and dragging her red nails across the side of her cheek until she left red streaks. “Misogi is like the most low maintenance guy on the planet either. He doesn’t talk at me about hope, he understands the way I see the world and tries to see the world I do. He doesn’t even want that much, he just wants to go back to that stupid school… so why can’t I… no matter how much I try force myself to want the same thing?”  
  
“...Kumagawa is really cool.”  
  
“No he’s not. I’m the cool one. I’m so cold. You know the reason Misogi didn’t learn styles is because of me. I killed Kaiki the second he started to improve. I dissociated and lost control of myself and killed him. And then I didn’t even react to it. It should be a big deal right?”  
  
“You killed my kind uncle Kaiki-kun...? But Kumagawa pulled me aside and told me he did it? Which one of you is lying? I still don't get why people lie.” Medaka said, her face truly perplexed.   
  
“Why did I do it? Did I just want to cut off every path of escape so Misogi could never get away fro me? Did I want to cause despair in a person I loved? Before I knew it I was watching myself do it but you know what… maybe the reason I’m not affected at all by losing control like this is it was always like this. I never once bothered to control myself. I was never in control in the first place. I’m just sitting inside of my own head, watching through my eyes like they’re windows, and my body just moves around, mistakenly thinking just like my own broken mind that what it’s doing is in my best interest.”

“...”  
  
“It’s so boring. Not being able to do a single thing, and just sitting completely still watching everybody else’s super fun rose colored life pass you by is so boring.” Junko finally spoke up.   
  
“Oh, so it’s determinism.”  
   
“Huh?” Junko just tended to google philosophy as she was to lazy to actually read boring text books.   
  
“Determinism. The idea that you can’t control yourself and everything you do is just a response to an extremely complicated array of stimuli and free will is just an illusion.”   
  
“Don’t you philosophy at me, when did you even start learning this stuff.” Junko repeated, offended.   
  
“Like last week. Isn’t that what philosophy is, the same as everything else you just read all the right material and memorize the books and then you get the right answer?’ Medaka was confident despite not quite getting it. 

“As usual you are somehow a genius and an airhead at the same time.”  
  
“Well anyway, I got it. I got it. I figured out the right answer.” She pointed at Junko, right in between her eyes, though one of her eyes was currently missing and covered in a stylish eye patch. “You actually feel bad don’t you? You don’t want to face what you did to Kumagawa, you’ve never felt bad or regretful before, so you’re just avoiding it because you don’t know how to deal with it. That’s why you’re explaining it away with frou frou philosophy, and why you’re acting so weird lately.”  
  
“...And now you’re gonna say I like you, we’re friends so I’ll help you face it.”  
  
“I hate you. We’re enemies. What you did to Kumagawa was unforgivable, I still think you’re a bad match for him and I don’t think you’re ever going to change. If I could I would take him away from you and marry both Zenkichi and him.”  
  
“Your family really is just like Togami’s weird dad isn’t it? Are you going to shoot for the harem ending?” Junko joked.   
  
“That’s why if you don’t take this seriously, I’ll confess to him. I’ll tell him I love him.”  
“...Huh?” Junko’s one dull eye sharpened.  
  
“Is that what you thought I'd say? That I'd take him away from you? Are you going to kill me like you did Kaiki? Everybody else on earth who could possibly get close to him? Is that what you're afraid of?”

“...” Junko considered the possibility seriously, she was one of the few that could envision ending the world in a practical sense.   
  
“If you don’t want it to happen then fight.”  
  
“Not everyone can be like you, you fight happy brain!”

“Well that's your fault not mine, for not being as amazing as I am. Just this once I'm happy to be better than someone, I'm happy I got to meet you Enoshima, to Medaka you."  
She was using her own name as a verb now. She was no longer sensitive to that. She had grown so powerful. That was all that girl ever did, get stronger, as opposed to Kumagawa who only got weaker and more worn down the more he endured.  
  
Junko’s dull and lifeless face, showed genuine anger for the first time in as long as she could remember. She stomped into the store and a moment later appeared with a stack of paper and a pen.

  
At this Medaka smiled. “Did you decide to help us plan?”  
  
“No, I’m just going to draw an execution machine to kill you with. Something even better than the ultimate punishment I had planned for myself.”

In a very Junko like way, Medaka stopped trying to look over her shoulder,  just sighed and gave up. “Whatever.” She stopped only for a moment. “What are you doing with makeup?”  
  
“Umm, it’s been like a day. I have to replace my makeup soon, if any of you see me without makeup I’m going to have to kill everyone here and then myself.”  
  
“And the hair dye.”  
  
“My roots are starting to show.”  
  
“Jeez, even everything that doesn’t make sense about your actions can easily be explained by how shallow you are. What a boring girl.” She looked back to Kumagawa and Matsuda who were both fighting over the same manga magazine, or maybe that was just their version of getting along to bicker like that. “You two, I’ll handle the plan. We’ll split up. Yasuke-kun, you go back and meet up with Komaeda and Kamukura. Kumagawa and I will fight together as a distraction while you get reinforcements.”

It was not a bad plan at all.  
Nobody else had any objections, and Junko was too busy doodling. Even when Kumagawa sat next to her to check on her, she just ignored the rest of him and started to doodle on his hands instead.  
  
The three of them together biked to a local theatre, to wait for Jun to come for them deciding to make such a dramatic place the stage of their last stand. Kumagawa stayed in between Junko and Medaka the entire time, smilin in a happy go lucky manner and not noticing the tension between the two of them.  
  
As far as he was concerned the die was already cast.  
There was something freeing about giving up and knowing you would already lose, that way you could just go all out and have fun with it.  
Everything was fine, everything was fine, everything was fine as long as he kept smiling. If he did not force himself to smile, he never would have wanted to leave Kaiki-kun’s body alone. He might have just stayed by that old man’s side forever so he would not be lonely.  
  
Just when the dust had settled though, it exploded. A red car burst through the wall, driven into the side of the building at an impossible angle considering they were waiting at the second floor. A crack ran up the wall and caused part of the ceiling to collapse.  
  
“Kumagawa the fight starts now!”  
  
Medaka called out, but Kumagawa did not hear her. As the second the fight had begun, one of the pieces of the ceiling hit him in the head and knocked him out. That was what he got for looking so cool earlier, and running his mouth like that.  
  
Aikawa Jun jumped from the hood of the car. Her face still had a cynical smile plastered. “I guess it’s already time for the climax, y’know. I’m glad I gave you guys time, it gave me time to go change into the right suit for a moment like this. So, between the strongest student, and the strongest contractor who do you think would win? I’m sure this is being discussed on message boards already like whose stronger, Goku or Saiatama” Then suddenly on a whim she changed her mind. “You know what, fighting is boring. What about we talk instead, hand over Junko and I’ll let you go. You don’t even like her right? Give her up and save the friends you actually do like.”  
  
At that Kurokami Medaka did not move. “Junko is my enemy. To me, enemies and friends are of equal value.”  
  
“What a lonely philosophy.” AIkawa observed. It was an observation that those who had even spent a few minutes with Medaka could make. “FIghting is awesome, actually. I love that I have a job that I solve most things by punching them. Words are useless, you can only understand each other once you’ve crossed fists. Let’s battle with our philosophies, let’s see if your lonely philosophy can trump mine.”  
  
“Wow, is this what other people feel like talking to me. This is exhausting.” Medaka said, in a fleeting moment of self awareness just like the one she had inspired from Makoto the other day. “My hatred for Junko is mine, and she’s my enemy too, so I can’t let you take her away.”  
  
_Don’t decide how other people should live for them and get mad when they don’t go your way. Because they’re people._ That was what Matsuda had told her, sharing his honest sentiments for once. People not only clung to happiness, they clung to their misery, they refused to get better, they wallowed forever, and they did it because they were people. It wasn’t a neat and tidy answer at all, it was awkward, it was hard to think about, but those were Matsuda’s feelings. He had finally shared them with her after she pestered him for so long.

She could not keep rampaging forever and searching for herself. She needed to decide sooner or later, if she wanted to stand on top of others, or be one of them. At this exact moment though, to defeat somebody who called herself the world’s strongest with complete confidence, she would need the strength of somebody who could climb over anybody to reach the top. Especially after the humiliating defeat again Iihiko, where she had not been able to do a single thing, where she had not even been able to keep her promise to Anshin’in-san to stop her from killing herself.  
  
If she chose to be human though, if she chose to be weak then two precious people who helped her realize her humanity, Junko and Kumagawa might be lost. And her own path to following Shiranui to save her from Iihiko and the fake Junko would be lost as well. She would lose yet another school, and her father would probably keep her under house arrest for two years ostensibly to protect her until she officially succeeded him.

At that moment. Really. Just at that exact moment Medaka realized the world was fundamentally unfair. It took her awhile but she got there. Just when Kumagawa was starting to break free from his bad habits, and heal, he lost both of his safety nets in the same day. Just when she wanted to decide how she wanted to live, this person who was stronger than her appeared from nowhere and was going to drag her back into a life she did not want. That was how the world was, it overwhelmed you, gave you no time for recovery, and just when you thought you could not take anymore, the weight of the whole sky fell down on you instead not giving you a single break.  
  
“Three, two, one, zerozaki!” Jun broke through her self reflection, shattering it like punching through a mirror. She did not even seem to realize she was going to get seven years of bad luck that way.  
  
She unleashed a no motion high kick with her hands in her pockets, hard enough to divorce a head from his torso, but Medaka was no zombie so she defended herself. With her one remaining hand, she grabbed at her ankle.  
  
At that moment she spun her body around using the momentum to force her useless arm to spin on it’s axis again. It meant pushing an already dislocated muscle past its limit but the pain barely showed on her face. Jun was taller than the sexy giraffe even as Medaka was yet to be fully grown, and for a moment she thought the blow would not connect and Medaka’s fist connected cleanly with her head. She looked amazed, the kind of cocky to get amazed by taking a single blow in the fight. The two of them spun around on axis, and then as she let go Jun landed cleanly, smiling still like she had not gotten punched in the face at all.

Medaka was still holding onto her foot though, she refused to let go. So, Jun responded kindly by slamming the foot she was holding onto directly downwards, with enough force to rip her arm out of her socket.  
  
She genuinely expected that Medaka would let go, that she would be smart enough to know when it was dangerous to take a hit. she had underestimated how much of a fight happy idiot that girl was, or maybe she knew exactly because her expression did not change at all when she heard the loud snap of the tendons in her shoulder ripping.  
  
Only when her arm became too loose and numb to move did Medaka finally let go.  
  
In the background, Junko acting like a member of the audience heckled. “Medaka-chan what are you doing? Are you going to really fight her with two broken arms? Are you Deku?”

‘At that, Kurokami Medaka smiled. A soft and shy looking smile. It was completely unlike her. “Jun-chan. How about we make a promise? In all honesty, I threw that punch out of hatred. But, as I’ve thought it seems I can’t get stronger just with that single motivation. If I lose here, I can’t reach Shiranui, or defeat Iihiko, and you said you wanted a game anyway. So, how about a one hit battle. Promise me that if this one hit I am going to deliver actually works on you, then you will give up and go home.”  
  
“That’s a silly bet to make. Then, I suppose if the hit does not work, you’ll surrender to me and stop protecting your friend… enemies… frenemies over there?”  
  
“No, I cannot promise that.”  
  
“Such a bold thing to say. It reminds me of the tough fighters I’ve encountered around the world. Go ahead then. It won’t really matter if you keep trying again and again, if you’re already dead after this one hit. See, you guys should reference older manga like that, otherwise you’ll make me feel like an old woman.”  
  
At that moment Medaka slipped off her shoes. She jumped in place with her bare feet, like she was warming up to run track. Then, just like Kaiki had when he easily outran her. She opened her mouth and told an outrageous lie. “The problem is I haven’t even begun to use my true power yet. I’m descended from a forbidden bloodline. I have a cursed eye. My right hand aches my with my hidden power. I’m going to access it right now to win.”  
  
She had not hit her head and gone full Chuuni. Instead, she was attempting to use a style the only way she had been shown how in the past, telling an outrageous lie that was obviously fake. Though, Kurokami was bred from a bloodline so, in some cases reality was stranger than fiction.  
  
At that moment Aikawa opened her fist and revealed a stun gun as Medaka ran at her. Aikawa’s movements were instantaneous, Medaka learned faster and better than anyone, and could become the best easily, but it suddenly felt like even if she could surpass Aikawa Jun eventually with her learning ability, she was taking her on one hundred years too early in this moment.

In that case all Medaka had to do was dodge, but they had chosen a theatre as a venue for their fight. Above them, in order to make the stage work and draw back the curtains there was all sorts of strings, running back and forth. Everything that happened on stage, it was just the simple manipulation of an interworking network of strings, even the spotlights were connected by wires.  
  
Medaka ran forward with all she had but she was too slow for Jun, even with a trick like the Kurokami Phantom. In the end it was not magical, or even ninpo, just the sheer amount of speed and skill Medaka had tricking most people’s eyes, but Jun was more skilled than that.  
  
It was logical between the body of a child and a full grown adult, the adults body would move better and with more experience. Medaka moved faster and more methodically than last time almost catching her off guard, but whatever secret move she was trying to pull with those ridiculous lies did not activate. Her last minute hail mary seemed to miss entirely. Aikiawa Jun appeared underneath hr and kicked her up into the ceiling. In an instant Kurokami Medaka was stuck in between the intercrossing strings and wires that made performing a play properly.  
  
“This is what happens when you only protect what’s in front of your eyes. Well, taking care of short-sighted kids is my part of the job. Try to avoid getting hurt by this.”  
  
Her glove itself was a stun gun. She had gone out of her way to find it during the half a day head start she gave them, when she opened her palm it began to spark. It was one of those cool spy looking gadgets that cool people like her had, it did not need to be explained more than that. She took the palm sized stun gun, and jumped up grabbing one of the wires that Kurokami had gotten trapped in like a spider’s web. Electricity unleashed from her palm, and pumped up through the wires and intercrossing strings. It was no different than touching a high-electricity power line. Not a stun gun attack, like the one she might have preferred if she had gone out of her way to bring a method to fight them nolethally, but rather a gigantic psark had been unleashed, made of gunpower. Fireworks were happening at various points, a brilliant show of colors arced around Kurokami Medaka’s body.  
  
Anything and everything became Aikawa’s weapon. As if the world existed for her convenience. As if this random building they had broken into to fight her in, was a stage constructed solely for her.  
  
If the opponentt’s card is speed, then dominate with superior speed. If the opponent is strong, just be stronger than them. That kind of always winning logic. Medaka thought she was the highest flying bird, and then an eagle had come and plucked her out of the sky and shredded her apart with her talons.

Medaka fell flat on the floor, her wings clipped, no ripped apart.  
  
Jun watched a moment, and then poked the body with her foot.  
  
“Whoops. Her heart’s stopped. I wasn’t serious about that you’re already dead line, I was only going all out because I thought you could handle it. I thought you were like me and you’d pull some amazing trick out of your sleeve at last minute if I applied all this pressure.”  
Please be careful when handling stun guns.  
But seriously.  
  
“Aahh, ahh, how can she just die? Man, I’ll have to figure out some way to revive you from the dead or something. Yeah I can probably figure it out, if it’s me I’ll figure out it. I wanted to talk to her a little bit more a nice girl like that.”  
  
She did not seem too bothered. This was just another person she had stepped on as the strongest. Even if this girl was alike her in some ways, she did not think about it too much. She did not feel guilty for stepping over others, or for her own existence like Kurokami Medaka did, or if she had once she gave up such feelings a long time ago.  
  
“Hey, hey, come on don’t die now. Weren’t you going to protect your friends. Your friends are right there, use the power of friendship to revive or whatever. Be filled with their strength. We can have a power of friendship match and see whose friends are stronger, or will that just turn into a free for all brawl.”  
  
She just kept talking at the girl’s unmoving corpse. Not even twitching from the electricity still running through her. Even Junko thought it was a bit insensitive.  
  
Then, she finally turned her attention to Junko the last one remaining. “Well, ungrateful friend are you just going to stand there after that girl died protecting you. Hey, you, stop watching and help! Are you some demon?”  
  
“Jeez. Even watching her suddenly die like that was boring. I didn’t feel anything at all. You really do ruin everything somehow, Medaka-chan.” In the next moment Junko started to spray perfume in the air around her, to get rid of the stech, posing as she did so.  
  
“Wow, is this girl serious. Is she seriously, serious?”  
  
“I’m never serious.” Junko said casually, before spraying the perfume right in Jun’s face. A cheap move, a cheat, one that someone so strong did not see coming. Then in the next moment she picked up Medaka and threw her over her shoulder, and suddenly began to run away.  
  
Of course that distraction was torn through in an instant. The moment Jun wiped the perfume out of her eyes, she looked up eagerly. “So, what’s your deal? Fighting? Tactics? Analysis? Well it doesn’t matter I guess whatever it is I’ll just do it better.”

At that moment Junko had a moment of clarity too. _Is this what it sounds like talking to me? Wow, that must be really exhausting._ Talking over others, rambling, just laughing at your jokes like that, it was a weird mix of Medaka and herself that made her annoyed.  
  
In a perfect imitation of Medaka’s voice, Junko threw her voice down the hallway with ventriloquism. “You really think I’d die from something like that? There’s no way, I was just playin dead to trick you.”  
  
“Ohhhh! Are you imitating voices! I love doing that, Jun can imitate voices and faces perfectly. Do you want to have a competition, see who’s he best actor? Let’s just settle things that way instead.” Then suddenly, Junko heard her own voice calling down the hallway. “Despair, despair, despair, I’m just some teenage blonde chick that’s really good at destroying things for some reason and came out of nowhere.”  
  
“This is a beary sticky situation, I might need to paws the game and reassess things.” Her monokuma voice leaked out as she began to feel stress, and her absolute confidence that she won in every situation was shaken.  
  
Everyone.  
Somehow they believed no matter how many enemies there may be, no matter how dificult it may be, when Medaka-chan needs to win will she indeed win. She was supposed to be the main character of this world, Anshin’in-san even said so. She was not the main charater though, just a girl with the expecation of being a main character pushed onto her, just like Medaka tended to push her ideals onto everybody else.  
  
She collapsed so easily. Even though she still had to face Iihiko, even though she still had to conront her friend Shiranui, was she really going to die randomly, to this sudden mystery boss that had appeared in the middle of the story.  
  
If she was not the main character then who was.  
This was all happening because of Medaka-chan’s stupid family drama, the hidden eighth branch of her family, her weird backstory that should have been cool but led to a boring result, Junko just wanted to destroy the world and kill herself but she had gotten dragged into this weird plotline because Medaka-chan’s old enemy showed up out of nowhere and stopped her.  
It all connected back to that one girl.  
Or so Junko thought, but then that girl was lifelessly clinging to her back and she was dragging along.  
  
“Isn’t this the time where hope is supposed to show up and pull another miracle out of it’s ass? God Medaka-chan, why are you so fat? It’ll be miracle if I can carry you any longer.” She had climbed up the stairs to the third floor, and gotten lost in the maze of hallways. It was fortunate they picked such a complicated on the inside and old building to make their stand in.  
  
She threw Medaka’s body against the wall. It still did not move.  
Where was the main character, really?  
Was her sister and Makoto going to show up again and bail them out.  
Was Ajimu just faking her death to mess with them?

Who was all of this centered around.  
  
Junko sat next to Medaka’s lifeless body, and drew her knees up against her chest.  
“I hate you because I’m jealous of you, okay.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Not of your looks, or your personality, no I think I’m way hotter and more likable.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You should be bored of everything just like I am. I think you are actually. Even though the world isn’t good enough for you just like me, you still feel so much, so much more than I do. You’re always at an eleven when it comes to your emotions, you’re angry at the whole world, you’re crying at the whole world, you love the whole world, you’re practically overflowing with the stuff.”  
  
“...”  
  
“It makes me feel like it’s not my brain that’s the problem, it’s not being too smart for the world to handle. It’s just me. I’m just not good enough, because I can’t handle it the way you can.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Maybe I really was just using my brain being broken as an excuse to do whatever I want. When I’m around you that’s what it feels like, that I’m this way because I want to be. I thought I really was trying too, I thought I was forcing this doll like body to move, and dance around in such a ridiculous way because if I ever stopped and became still I’d be like Kamukura forever. I thought I was going to absolute extremes to try to enjoy myself, and make myself feel something.”

“...”  
  
“This time I finally wanted to live, I thought that, I thought I was trying to live when I came out of Jabberwock. I thought I was trying to live for the first time, and looking for some reason to live in the real world.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I wanted to try. It was just for one person, I don’t need to love all of humanity like you do, I don’t even care about the world anymore.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Why can’t I do it for that one person? Why won’t my brain let me have this? Everybody has so much, feels so much, distracts themselves so much. Why can’t I have that one boy? Why does the star have to eventually stop shining after it falls out of the sky, I just want that one little spark, to keep dancing and changing different colors, and keep being warm, without getting extinguished.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I guess it’s just me. I guess I’m just going crazy because I want to. Because that’s all I’ve ever done. Just give up, and all easily into despair instead of facing things. I guess I’m sabotaging myself by going crazy before I even have to face trying to change. Yeah sounds like something I’d do.”  
  
“...”  
  
“It’s easier for the fragile glass doll to break. It’s way easier to break than carry that weight. Is that it? Is that the answer? I wasn’t chasing despair, I just did what’s convenient, and what was easy, over and over again until I became this?”

“...”  
  
“You’re not going to suddenly revive from the dead even though I made this heart felt confession. How lame of you, Medaka-chan you don’t understand your tropes at all. I guess I’m just a crazy person talking to a corpse now too, in addition to myself.”

Nothing was gained from that conversation. No progress was made as usual. As Junko was an irredeemable person, with no real motivation.  
  
She wiped at her face with her arms. “Damn, my makeup is all smeared. I’m going to go to the bathroom to fix it. Don’t go anywhere. Well I guess you can’t cuz ya dead.”

Then the body that she had taken the care to drag all the way up here, she just carelessly left it behind as she changed her mind and decided fixing her makeup was more important.  
When she was coming out of the bathroom however, Aikawa finally spotted her. She took off running, but despite being able to see every step she would take ahead of time the differences between their bodies was too great.

“Jeez, is karma coming for me finally? Is that why everything’s going wrong at random?”  
  
“Like that matters shit.” Aikawa said, interrupting. “The more you plan the more you succumb to your plan. You thought too much, and Medaka-chan did too. Don’t you think there’s been a bit too much self reflection recently?’

Suddenly, Junko whipped her head to the side, and the wall cracked where her head had beenin front of it a moment ago. Aikawa had punched out of anger, she was angry. The situation was too familiar to her.  
  
As she’s an adult, she doesn’t need that much of a backstory. Everything is already set in stone for her. It’s not like she’s in flux. Unlike Enoshima though she had a backstory indeed. I’m not going to get too dramatic about it, but basically.  
  
Aikawa Jun was born to destroy the world.  
Her father was the worst human being in the world, one who did not fit in anywhere. He set his goal as the destruction of the world, believing that destiny existed and was pre-written with no way to change it. The world was like a story and his true goal was to set foot outside that story.  
So for that purpose, he had Aikawa Jun, using selective breeding and mad science to produce what he thought would be a human being capable of destroying the world.  
Then, when she did not want to destroy the world, he abandoned his daughter without any hesitation once he figured out she was useless.  
He was actually worse than Enoshima Junko.  
Junko would not abandon her toys that easily, she would at least go out of her way to destroy them to feel the despair. She would show her love that way.  
  
Compared to that ridiculous situation, Junko was just some girl who had been born to normal parents who happened to be really smart. Jun had only been briefed that Junko was somebody dnagerous who had threatened Hope’s Peak at one point, and was somebody smart enough to cause chaos in the stock market at a whim.  
  
But there was a familiar aura about her that she recognized from her piece of shit dad. An aura of logic, of the kind of person who believes that everything will go exactly as predicted. That pissed her off.  
She was no longer laughing - she was angry.  
Perhaps it was illogical to get mad at Junko for the similiarites to a man she did not know.  
But Jun herself was illogical.  
She was angry. Intensely angry.  
  
“I heard that speech you gave. You thought you were finally being honest? That’s just self pity.  Stop howling, and howling you pathetic loser! I’m just listening and you’re making me blush! The hell do you think you’re doing making me even redder! Ahh? I hate logic driven people like you, stuck on their own logic.”

At that moment, Jun chained several blows together which Junko dodged with prediction alone just barely, but she could not keep it up forever. Her stamina was not that good. All that being lazy was finally catching up to her.  
  
Jun finally just beat her with stamina, and Junko moved sluggishly to predict one last blow.  
  
Or so it seemed.  
  
The next moment even though she took a blow to the face directly, Junko did not waver at all. It was like she had caught the blow on purpose with her face. Never did getting punched in the face look so cool.  
  
“Why would I do that? Howling like a pathetic loser, if I stop talking like that I won’t be able to talk at all. That’s all I do!”

Suddenly she said a very un-junkolike thing and her voice changed.  
Jun pushed her head a little bit further, and then as her head tilted back, the blonde wig fell off her head. It took Junko only two days since her fight with Mukuro, to shove Kumagawa into a blonde wig in a skirt.  
Kumagawa Misogi smiled. “Guess you got fooled by a stupid trick like this, miss genius, and while I’m distracting you Junko is going to run away safely.”  
  


“Oh it’s the weird kid that always talks so much. I thought your kind of humor was in dry, and gloomy sarcasm. What are you doing joking around like this? Mocking others? Pretending to be others?”  
  
Her anger did not seem to abate, even though the target had changed.  
  
“Too bad, too bad really. You reminded me of someone I liked. Somebody who talks nonsense just like you, but they don’t seem to enjoy themselves nearly as much as you do.”  
  
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,but if someone as worthless as me reminds you of some other person… they must be extremely unlucky.”  
  
“It’s too bad, you’ve attached yourself to the worst kind of person possible. The person who thinks they can do whatever they want, because they’re smarter than everybody else around them.”  
  
“Aren’t you just talking about yourself, Aikawa-san.”  
  
“Call me Aikawa-san.”

“But I did!?”

Some people were so impossible to please, but then again Kumagawa could not please them even if they were easy to please. That was the kind of existence he was.  
  
“I thought you wanted to see me laugh. Not funny - not funny at all to me! Even if you’re gonna oppose me, make me laugh! Everyone and everyone looks away from what they really gotta do, and then they make excuses and lie to try to cover shit up - crawling around like dirty scum! Stop being a slob! It’s simple, don’t slack! Why don’t you people stand up straight! Stop slouching!”  
  
Perhaps she expected him to say.  
We cannot do that.  
Junko and I cannot do that.  
But he just smiled at her and said.  
  
“It’s cooler when you slouch, obviously. If you’re a genius who loves looking cool, then why are you missing out on the obvious?”  
  
“Stick out your chest, straighten your back, be proud of yourself howl at the enemy don’t bow down! Don’t give up and let go and don’t end it yourself. Do you brats want to be sympathized over! Stop dragging people into your own narcissism. How many people had to be dragged into the ocean and die because of that? If you want to brood, the brood by yourself, no one knows or cares about how you freaks feel! Stop rejecting everything for beans and stop carelessly accepting!”  
  
Yeah, it was wrong to live that way.  
They were not struggling to do the right thing like Mukuro and Makoto.  
They were not pondering the right way.  
The two of them together were just trying to get away with doing the wrong thing.  
It was sneaky and underhanded.  
The furthest thing possible from taking responsibility and growing up.

"You’re right! You’re totally right!” Kumagawa said with a smile. “I forgot how to live, with all this self reflection crap. From now on, I’m aiming only for laughs. I’m sorry, Aikawa-san even if I lie a lot, and am a terrible excuse for a human being I try to keep my promises. I did promise you a laugh."

”Aikawa Jun, the world’s strongest.”  
  
“Kumagawa Misogi, the world’s weakest.”  
  
Even after all that fanfare though, Jun opened the fight the exact same way she had against Medaka. She aimed a blow at his face hard enough to punch his head straight from his shoulders.  
  
He did not block, and his head flew straight off.  
  
Jun was once again shocked by her own strength. “You were uh… you were supposed to block that. Gosh, am I going to have to figure out how to reattach heads now too…”  
  
His head flew down the hallway, bouncing like a ball. Kumagawa even remembered the blow flashing through his eyes, she had hit him square in the cheek and caused his head to twist around until his neck separated and his flesh fell apart. He saw the image of the hallway spinning around him, but no that was just his head bouncing.  
  
Then, suddenly his body that had begun falling backwards stopped falling. He lifted himself up, and stood there head attached to his shoulders again. He had died one moment, and he was alive the next.  
  
Jun was confused. “Umm… your head it just. It was there and now it's here again.”  
  
Apparently, she was thoroughly on the science side of things. Nothing supernatural about her, human made, just selective breeding, hard work, and a little bit of all natural mad science thrown into the mix.  
  
Kumagawa almost felt bad, using a supernatural power against her. “Ummm...you see it’s cell division uninhibited, stem cells, I got bitten by a radioactive immortal jelly fish… or uh stung they don’t have teeth, regeneration factor, hayflick limit.”  
  
“Literally none of that made sense you’re just stringing smart words together to sound cool.”  
  
“You just said you don’t like things driven by logic! I regenerate okay! You don’t need to question it if it’s cool!” Kumagawa said, as he finished touching his face to make sure it was there. It was strange, he had never used all fiction this fast. Usually he woke up in that classroom. But he guessed there was no reason to do that now, Ajimu was dead, and nobody would be waiting for him there. “You said stand up on your own, and I did it even after you punched my head off. Jeez, jeez, what a pain, people like you are so hard to impress.”  
  
Just like that the fight resumed as he ran after her. He launched himself off the ground and tried to close the distance between them with a flying kick, only for Jun to dodge it easily, and then smack his head off again. Blood splashed across the floor, it splashed on her face, pink blood ruining her red soaked body.

Then suddenly, his head was back on his shoulders again, Kumagawa gripped his face in surprise once more. She grabbed him by the wrist, and bent it backwards hard enough to break the bone and pulled his whole body forward.  
  
However, her strength was too great and his body tore like paper at his elbow joint. He clutched at his missing hand for a moment while she held his limb in her own hand, and then that limb she was holding disappeared and he was holding a complete arm.  
  
He made a sloppy punch forward, missing her head entirely. She retaliated with the same strength, and blew his head off once more. She saw his neck, and the trail of blood emerging from it as his head flew away in slow motion.  
  
For a moment, Jun was so stunned by what she saw, she was convinced she saw Kumagawa’s head rolling around in multiple places. All of them were laughing at her. Even detached from his body, he was laughing and having a good time.  
  
Jun grabbed him by the face and rushed down the stairs, tired of fighting like this in small hallways. She kicked open a pair of doors and made it to the main stage again, front and center instead of back stage like where she had fought medaka. She jumped back and jumped into the air performing a perfect back flip. She landed where the stage lights were.  
  
Kumagawa made a clumsy jump after her, and she jumped down to humor him. The two of them fought in midair, but Kumagawa only took blow after blow as their bodies turned around each other. She chopped at him with her flattened hands and somehow the strength was enough to tear through his elbows once agian and sever his forearms.  
  
She perfectly stuck the landing as she landed on stage. A ten out of ten.  
Kumagawa fell on his face, crashing into the wooden stage and leaving a hole. An imperfect landing. One out of ten.  
  
He was immediately on his feet, but and charged at her but she did not give him time. She raised her hand and slapped him, the collision was so hard that his face fell off, like it was just a mask he was wearing. He fell backwards and a naked skull rolled off his neck.  
  
At that moment Jun finally noticed how heavy her breathing was. It was like she had completely exhausted herself, winning one hundred times against this boy who lost all too easily.  
  
Kumagawa’s armless, headless body sat on the ground and twitched. In the next moment he stood up once more all the way on his own, his head and arms were back. He took off the other direction and ran. She did not give him a chance, she ran after him and grabbed him by the ide of the face. She smashed his head into the wall and grinded it against at top speed, a speed even faster than Medaka could manage.  
  
Then she let go, letting the whiplash of the sudden chane tear the body in half. His body separated in two halves, and his lower half kept running for a moment almost cartoonishly, while his upper half landed in a hand stand. He ran around on just his hands for a few moment, ignoring the agony of having half his body severed and then came at her like that.  
  
Ridiculous.  
She realized.  
This was ridiculous.  
  
She punched his upper body away, only for it to land on his lower half and for the two to seamlessly join. He ran at her once more, and she caught him by the shoulders. Kneed him once in one arm, intending to break it but severing it again, and then in the other arm.  
  
Junko’s red and black uniform had been blown off of him by this point. He only had her skirt and his boxer shorts. He thought he pulled off the look though. At  that moment Jun could see it, as she dodged yet another clumsy blow he threw her way. This boy who seemed to be immortal who instantaneously recovered from every wound, had scars painted all over his upper torso.  
  
She caught him by the neck, and squeezed hard with her two hands, pulling at his arm and twisting it away from him.  
  
“How many extra lives do you have? Even if it’s a thousand it won’t beat me.”  
  
“Sorry. I was playing around. Just once, I wanted to go all out in one, to see what it was like. To push myself against someone real strong, to die over and over again without dying, to have those feelings of I’m never going to give up.”  
  
Kaiki asked him not to use all fiction anymore.  
But Kaiki was dead.  
He was no longer under any obligation to keep that promise.  
That was why he wanted to use it as much as possible.  
  
Graveyard.  
He had been in one for a very long time, he would be here forever, surrounded by gravestones on all side. He suddenly realized it. The graves had his name over and over again.  
Staggering, his body sways.  
The gravestones around him sway.  
Must be the wind.  
A strong wind’s blowing.  
A strong wind.  
The wind blows for someone’s sake.  
THe wind blow’s for everyone’s sake.  
That’s just-  a foolish delusion.  
Wind is wind.  
Stone is stone.  
Dead people are dead.  
In the end, dead people are dead.  
Just like other people are, in the end, others and not himself.  
Just like that he began walking. Walking along the path.  
Gravestones on one side, and gravestones on the other side.  
The mass of stones unfolded beore him surrounding him like a labyrinth, the more he walked the more lost he became. The more he walked, the more he began to doubt there was even a path in the first place.  
The water over there is bitter.  
The water over there is sweet.  
That’s still just-  
A foolish delusion.  
He repeats it.

Dying without death.  
Living without life.  
He repeats it until it loses all meaning.  
Even those that died,  
Kaiki,  
Ajimu.  
They don’t want him to think they died because of him.  
Realizing that, with a surge of energy he feels as though he’s solved the puzzle.  
Those two had died living the best life they could.  
He needed to live for their sake. He needed to live on with a purpose of his own because he could not find their purpose now, they were already dead.  
Enough already, enough, I’ll stop acting like a child. Sulking, jealous, gloomy.  
I’ll put an end to the me of the past, I’ll grow up.  
If I don’t I, I’m sure I won’t be able to keep living.  
That was the conclusion he was supposed to reach, he steps out and feels the beach between his sand. He no longer stands in the classroom, his heart is no longer there. He stands on an island instead, and the ocean of water he was promised unfolds before him.  
However the moment he lifts his head to see the light, there’s a crack in the sky instead.  
He falls from the sky.  
Other hims fall from the sky.  
Some of them only lived for a minute, some of them lived for months, one was for a year, one a day. They all are dead hims, they pour from the sky without a care at all. They fall into the sea like trash getting dumped into it.  
How many times had he died at this point? One hundred? One thousand? One Million? Surely, by now the total number of deaths he had accumulated could create a small army to outnumber hell.  
Starting at the other dead himselfs.  
He wondered. Is this even living? It just seemed to be dying over and over again.  
Then a second passed, and the current him died because AIkawa Jun karate chopped his head off.  
Another him woke up in the graveyard and repeated the whole scene again.  
There was no way a human psyche could withstand that much death.  
It must just be a trick he thought.  
Because he forgot so much, he had no memories or experiences together to string a personality out of it, to learn lessons from it.  
So, it must all be fake.

Everything was an act. Innocence and recklessness. And action and fondness.  
If everything was an act - maybe he still could have been saved.  
His bizarre ego, his existence as a stitched together snake.  
There must be something of him left, of the person who had trauma write and rewrite his personality again, like a finnicky writer pushing him through a thousand different drafts.  
She told him to stop deceiving, but then what…?  
Stop deceiving from moment to moment to moment, but then what? Wasn’t that what everyone else did.  
When did everyone else stop pretending to be human too? Why was he always so late on these things?  
  
Kumagawa Misogi smiled, a stitched on smile like one would sew on the face of a doll. His eyes were worse than those of a rotten fish, they had rotted out entirely. He reached forward and popped the blue contacts in his eyes Junko had given him to intimidate her, revealing the gery ones he left in return.  
  
“I just wanted you to feel a little bit what I felt, to be honest. Trying your best and not getting anywhere at all, that kind of pointless thing.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I think I can understand how you feel. That’s why I wanted to let you know how I felt.”  
  
There it was, that twisted logic again. Guided solely by that. He did not even seem that affected by dying so many times consecutively just now.  
  
Jun tilted her head to the side. “Were you born to destroy the world too?”  
  
He was born as a sacrifice. As a noble sacrifice, he was respectfully and lovingly abused. Despair was a constant companion in the past. Perhaps it would be more apt to say that it was all there was. He was created for the sole purpose of being afflicted with all the misery in existence. Then one day into his torture, he escaped. Or perhaps it might be better to say that he was plunged further into despair.  
  
Never seeing the light, only sinking deeper and deeper. He did not even have the mercy of reaching the bottom of the ocean. And still Kumagawa smiled. “People are born for no reason. They live unrelated. And die worthlessly. Because there’s no goal in life, there’s no point in being alive.”Yet he did not repeat such a sympathetic backstory. He just fell back on his same old line. “That’s why it’s so damn fun!”  
  
“This idiotic play will never be peformed. I’m going to find a way to finish you without killing you, and then I’ll go after Junko.” Jun said in response to that, preparing herself for battle once more.  
  
“That’s fine, that’s fine. I love idiotic plays the most.” Suddenly, Kumagawa moved faster than he did a moment ago, as if somebody else entirely was controlling hsi body. The clumsiness in his movements was gone and he surprised Jun dispapearing out of sight and appearing to grab her by the face as he flung her into the air. She crashed into the stage just like he had a moment ago. “Let’s put on a play! Your line will be… let’s see. I don’t want to die, and I want to die after all.”  
  
His brain had been smashed to pieces and reassembled over and ove again, so he understood a little bit why he had suddenly felt like he was jsut watching his body move from an outsider’s perspective.  
  
His body did all kinds of cool stuff he did not know he was capable of, flipping back and forth in the air to meet Jun’s expert moves. The stage they were fighting on, was torn into pieces, and wooden shrapnel flied everywhere like fireworks to accentuate their fight.  
  
**_Are you afraid?_ ** _  
_ _Yeah…_ _  
_ **_Why?_ ** _  
_ _Well… because… I have a void inside me. And I’m getting swallowed up by it. A giant hollow._ _  
_ _I don’t have a self to fill it with._ _  
_ _That’s why I can’t win._

 _I’m fading._ _  
_ _My mind is…_ _  
_ _It’d be nice to go like this, just to lose my mind after dying the thousandth time._ _  
_ _To not think about living or dying anymore, about winning or losing._ _  
_ **_Don’t you have someone to protect._ ** **_  
_ ** _I don’t know._ _  
_ _I don’t know anymore._ _  
_ _That person ****ed Kaiki._ _  
_ _That person wants to **** me._ _  
_ **_Isn’t there someone to save?_ ** **_  
_ ** _It’s impossible._ _  
_ _Because I’m someone who can’t save anybody else._ _  
_ _Because she’s someone who can’t be saved by anybody._ _  
_ _Because there’s no reason for what she does._ _  
_ _Because I don’t understand things like reason._ _  
_ _We were mismatched from the start._

 **_So you’re just not going to try?_ ** **_  
_ ** **_Just like nobody tried to save me?_ **

As he looked to the side he saw it.  
There was a child sitting in the front row of the seats watching their performance. A child clinging onto a bunny rabbit.

 _That’s right she was scared too._ _  
_ _Scared just like I was._ _  
_ _Okay…_ _  
_ _I’ll._ _  
_ _Choose to save._

There were fingers closing around his neck. The goddess wrapped her fingers around his neck. He could care less, he wrenched his head away and heard the sound of the fingers on one of her hand snapping.  
  
Kumagawa twisted his whole body and threw a punch hitting Jun squarely in the face. It might have been the first hit he landed the whole fight.

“You’re a river too. Jun Aikawa. If you read it that way it means a river of love. But you see… I’m a Kumagawa. I’m a river of bears. And bears are cooler than love.”  
  
That was a line too cool for Kumagawa to say it. Suspicious.   
  
Aikawa Jun stood up to fight once more, and suddenly she heard a gun cocking behind her head. She glanced back and saw a normal looking girl barely worth describing. Her hair was red, but not crimson red like hers, and her eyes were red but a dull red lacking in any fire. She had the face of a plain girl that could be found anywhere.  
  
She was wearing a black uniform that she had swapped out for Kumagawa MIsogi in the bathroom. “You assumed that I switched places with Misogi and ran away. Actually, I changed into the kind of person you wouldn’t notice so I could sneak up behind you like this while Misogi was being a distraction.”  
  
Suddenly, Kumagawa spread out his ten fingers. Every line from the play they had just recited, was written on his hand perfectly. Jun saw her own words too, written ahead of time.  
  
“It’s not fate or anything pretentious like that, I’m just smarter than you. Gosh, gosh, why are all the cool backstories wasted on boring people like you and Medaka-chan? Born to destroy the world? Were you a mad science project? Did human breeding take place? Do you hate your existence? Come on, play up the tropes a little more.” Junko complained before cocking her gun again. “Oh, and I bet when you caught me you were going to say a lame line like ‘strategies like that won’t work against me. Chessboards don’t matter. When you’re a natural born queen, kings, and all the other pieces, and checkmates don’t matter.’ 0/10. I hate it.”  
  
That was exactly what she was going to say, jun thought as she watched through her red eyes.  
  
“It’s your fault I don’t have a backstory or reason for doing this. You guys stole all the cool backstories away. Anyway, you have Misogi to blame for this. He said the best kind of plans to fool smart people, are the dumb ones they would not even think of.”

“...”  
  
“I guess you could do a super cool spin kick if you wanted and kick the gun out of my hands but that’s just being a bad sport.”  
  
“No, it’s fine, I lost.” That loud woman with overwhelming presence said that line in a quiet voice and raised both her hands up. “I never expected someone like you would actually come back for their friends.”

“They’re not my friends.” Junko said immediately, sticking her tongue out with disgust.  
The truth was Medaka’s words did get through to her. She wanted to die before admitting it. From the moment that they were at the convenience store, she had planned the scenario and written it beforehand.Junko pointed the gun away and pulled the trigger. A small flag with the word ‘bang’ came out. “This was just a fake by the way. Where the hell was I going to find a real one? I’m not my military Otaku sister.”  
  
However even though the scene had ended, the script was finished, Kumagawa Misogi continued to move.  
  
“Hey, Misogi you can stop.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Hey, Misogi that’s enough. Good job. I’m complimenting you for once.”  
  
“Who said it was over with? Aikawa-san, how can you call yourself the strongest when you can’t even kill a weakling like me.” Kumagawa said as he took another step forward towards her. Another step forward towards the grave. Another step forward towards the ocean. All he knew was going forward with persistence. “Have to fight… have to fight… have to fight…”

 

😈

 

Kurokami Medaka raised her head from a desk in shock.  
She stared at an empty middle school classroom, that was familiar to everybody else but her because Medaka never died, never lost in a fight, unlike all of her classmates who kept falling down and ending up in this little room Ajimu created.  
  
_Huh? where is this place? My classroom from middle school. The wounds I got from Iihiko have healed, even my clothes don’t tell me that everything was all a dream._ _  
_ _No!_ _  
_ _That’s a lame twist._ _  
_ _I was definitely fighting just earlier! So why am I here… Where is this place!?_ _  
_ _I didn’t even get to fight Iihiko again, not here, not yet, not a random midboss…_ _  
_ _  
_ She stood up suddenly wanting to race towards the exit when she heard a voice calling out to her.  
  
“This ‘place’ is just a space Ajimu Najimi created within you. However, now that she’s dead it’s only an empty classroom. That’s why I’m ‘making use’ of it. WIthout permission, but I’m sure she will forgive me.”  
  
Awoman in a nurse’s uniform was standing before her, holding a bocquet of flowers. She had hair similiar to Medaka’s but white instead of purple, and eyes that were just like hers.  
  
“M… Mother?”  
  
“Good job for your hard work. Seems like you had a heck of a life. But you still managed very well, congratulations. You don’t have to fight anymore.”She offered the bocquet to her. A funeral bocquet.  
  
What was this?  
Had she crossed over to the afterlife?  
Was she hallucinating in death?  
Was she trying to abnegate herself for dying so early, in such an undramatic fashion.  
  
“I can’t accept this. I still have to continue fighting. Enoshima, Shiranui, Zenkichi, Kumagawa, Kamukura, Komaeda, My younger brother, they are all waiting for me.”  
  
She ginored her mother and walked straight past her, not even bothering to look into the eyes of the mother she had been desiring to see for so long. There was a door, there should have been a door, if Kumagawa came to a place like this and walked out of it all the time and popped back up alive she could to.

“Sure, does bring back memories. Yet, it’s so sad. When, I too, was aliv. I kept on fighting like how you are right now. I always stood against the head wind and ran to be the first to strike. I believed that if I took the lead, then the others would follow after me.” She placed the bocuqet down and sat back on the desk, crossing her legs as she did. “Such is reality, I purposefully gave myself the role of devil’s advocate saying that it was for the people and the world. But in reality, I wasn’t seen as a devil’s advocate, and was just seen as a devil. No one bothered to care about the ideals I held.”  
  
Medaka hesitated at the door for a moment. She remembered the time that the entire school had rejected her. She only received two percent of the vote, when all she had wanted to do was save all of them.  
  
“On the contrary I witnessed how an egocentric malice managed to save many and evolve what it meant to be human. It’s extreme logic, but for example when a war erupts, lots and lots of people die right. Yet, the same war also brings life to the economy, gives birth to employment and assists the improvement of the medical and science fields. Enoshima Junko was going to cause ultimate despair, but because of her actions an Ultimate Hope was going to be born too… but because that never happened neither Ultimate Despair nor Ultimate Hope exist and now both of them don’t know what to do. The fact that good deeds injure humans, and evil deeds save humans sure does break whatever you believed in, right?”  
  
“...”  
  
“That woman whose fighting out there, she’s just like you. I don’t think she could ever accept the existence of people like Kumagawa, or Junko, people who can only do things in the wrong way. But, those two have both helped you in their own way haven’t they?”  
  
“...”  
  
“And I’m not just talking about history either. It’s actually quite a personal experience for me as well. For example I had an idiotic younger brother who did nothing good with his life, but because of that man I was able to know love. He introduced me to your father, and I became human for just a little bit. Then, I made my youngest sister into a good person, but she came to hate me for it. Again, such is reality, no matter how many ideals you may hold. Nothing happens. Nothing changes. The person you save might just become a murder n the future. THe person you kill might have become a murderer in the future.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You couldn’t win against that woman, because she’s strong and unbreakable like you but moreso, so you broke against her. She’s going to get outwitted by those who have learned to bend, like Junko and Kumagawa though. You should learn to bend your ways. If no, some day, you will break, get crushed, and become a lost soul like me.”

“...”  
  
“Have you really been saving your friends lately anyways? Has fighting for your friends been working for you? You failed to protect your friends from getting trapped in that death game. You failed fifty two times to rise up and stop the death game. You failed to stop Shiranui from running away from you, and failed to understand her in time. THat’s just how the world goes. That’s just reality.”  
  
So then the two pathways that were laid out before Kurokami. She could become like Aikawa Jun, that woman who never stopped flowing like a river, and destroyed everything in her path without really thinking. She could become like her mother, a tired and lost war weary veteran, someone completely worn out from the world from how hard she fought.  
  
She could just succeed her father’s business, and think about making her next heir even more talented than she was. Raising that child to be an even better Kurokami Medaka, perfecting the experiment.  
  
“...I am jealous. That you have fought enough in this world be able to speak of it.” At this, Medaka gave an innocent, shy and girlish smile once more. “I still don’t know much of the world to talk about it I still need to work harder!”  
  
Hato Tsurubami hesitated.  
  
“In the past I believed in myself, that the sole reason i was born was to help strangers. I even boasted so far as to accept any problems for 24 hours, 365 days a year, but that ambition rashed. There was really no reason for me to be born. But even though my ambition and faith have fallen, there is still one thing that hasn't changed. I love people. Every time I see people, I know people I grew to admired people. I really do love humans.”

  
Medaka turned around just then reaching for the door once more. “Those two are trying really hard to be human, I want to watch them, and I want to learn to be human with them.”

“That’s suicidal. You will truly die the next time you come here. Iihiko isn’t just a midboss he’s the real deal.”  
  
“Of course, I am afraid to die. But what I am afraid of, is to die as a monster. I want to stick around and ask, all sorts of things, like did you love me, were you planning to raise me, if you had lived would I have gotten a normal childhood, but I guess that doesn’t matter. I got to hurry up because those two are kind of disasters.”  
  
“...”

“More selfishly, I want to die with a cute smile. I am a girl after all.” She looked back at her mother one last time, and smiled with her eyes closed. The same carefree smile Kumagawa always had. Maybe she was just imitating him, or maybe she had learned how to do it finally.  
  
“You’re probably not even real. Goodbye brain ghost mom, dead hallucination mom, whatever. Thank you for talking to me. Could you go talk to Matsuda-kun too, he probably needs it.”

Kurokami Medaka stood up on her own just then, her heart starting up again. She looked at her fried looking hair and wondered if she should have been as shallow as Enoshima and bought beauty products when she had the chance at that amazing convenience store for commoners.

She stumbled down the hallway, and when she finally made it to where all the noise was coming from she saw Kumagawa about to throw himself into another bad situation due to his own foolishness. She acted without thinking, and threw her arms around him.  
  
Observing from afar, Junko thought this was it. Medaka was going to make good on her threats. Because she did not have the words to stop him, or to help hi in this moment, and she was standing still as always.  
  
“Hey, Kumagawa. Have you given up on winning against me? I am no longer a student council president, and you aren't a vice president anymore either. Have you stopped trying to catch me off guard? Don’t be mistaken, if that is what you want, then that is fine. I’m not as battle crazed as I used to be anymore. So if you have given up on winning against me and simply are enjoying life as what it is that’s fine. There are many lives out there that are happy without needing to win. I know, let’s stop competing and become friends instead! I’ve always wanted to be your friend since middle school.”  
  
Kumagwaa ‘s eyes froze instead.  
Not a confession of love, but a questioning of his central motivation. His eyes that were battle crazed, rabid, his mind that he had completely given over to fighting he snapped back into his body in a second like a rubber band pulled him there.  
His eye fell closed, and the pain disappeared from his face like water washed it away.  
A smile spread across his lips, his smile became more curved.  
  
『I don’t want to become friends with you. It’s not about Junko, I hurt you in the past when we were in middle school for no good reason, and I can’t forgive myself for it. That’s why I was avoiding you.』  
  
“I know. I remember, you told me it in the… 42nd loop of the killing game? Sorry about killing you afterwards by the way.”

『Oh, that’s right you remember that now. Wait how are you alive, oh you’re Medaka-chan that’s how nevermind. Medaka-chan I don't feel like it's right to bully my old middle shcool junior to gain my first win that's all.』  
  
“Well, I won’t interrupt you then. Go back to giving it your all, you want to win against Jun-chan, right?”

『No… I want to win. I want to win against Junko. I will win against her. I can’t afford to throw myself away here.』

“I see. Then I have no problem at all. Come on, we have to go hit the road and find Shiranui we can’t waste our time here. Thank you Jun-chan, this was lots of fun.” Medaka said, as she casually turned around and waved to the other woman goodbye.  
  
Junko had not taken him away to begin with. There was no love triangle to begin with. Kumagawa always forgot and moved onto the next love like it was his first. Well, that was fine. Her own feelings were probably mistaken about him too they were both still learning.  
  
She wanted to observe people, just as they are without forcing them to be something else. That was the conclusion she came to. That was why she did not need to force Kumagawa to be her friend either, or to fight with her like she did in the old days. She did not need to forcibly meddle in their relationship.

“You threw my script completely off you know! The timing’s all wrong now! We’re ending on an awkward note instead of a climax.” Junko shouted from the background, waving the bundled up paper in her hands like she was a grouchy director.  
  
“Enoshima if I had revived right at the moment you expected me too, you still would be complaining. Gosh, gosh, you really do nothing but complain and throw harsh words my way. But I guess that’s just your way of showing love considering what you did to your sister, I love you too.”

Kumagawa stumbled forward a few more steps until he collapsed only to be caught by Junko. He looked up and saw a weird blur in her eyes. He reached forward and tried to wipe it away, smearing her makeup as he did. 『What are you doing? Wasting tears on someone like me. What a weird girl.』  
  
“But you almost disappeared Misogi, and even though I was the one that pushed you there I couldn’t bring you back.”

『I guess you failed. I guess you were useless this time. I guess you can’t be forgiven, or can’t make up for what you did. I guess you’ll have to try again next time.』Kumagawa said, reaching up to caress her crying face for a moment, before pinching her cheek hard. 『If you choose to live to tomorrow.』

“Then, I’ll live as well.” Junkos aid, her voice sweet for a moment. “Keeping promises is so hard, it’s like ugh, where’s the betrayal to spice things up. Well I guess there’s plenty of time for betrayal if we keep living.”

Jun who had been stewing in her loss to such a girl, saw that the world did not end, nor did she lose her title as the strongest. Those kids just kept on doing what they were doing before. Then she could probably just relax a little bit and leave it be. “What a good ending. You two revived yourself from the dead, so I didn’t have to go on an adventure to the underworld and play msuic for hades, then walk back without looking backwards to revive you. I didn’t have to unleash a zombie plague or anything. That’s good, that’s good. Actually, I like you kids, it’s rare kids take responsibility for themselves these days. Good luck in whatever you’re doing, it’s not like I care that much about jobs anyway I fail as many jobs as I complete because I get bored fast.”  
  
As she said all that Junko began to walk forward, supporting Kumagawa over her shoulder. A girl like Junko was the only person he’d ever lean against for such support, because he was used to standing up on his own.  
  
"Hey, river boy. I still can't really piece it together. The difference between you and my friend. You're both emo so why are you cheerful like that, and he's always moody." Jun called after him.   
  
Kumagawa put the pair of sunglasses, crimson red ones, that he had pick pocketed from her and put them over his eyes. 『There's different forms of nihilism you know, for example there's nihilism, and there's the cooler nihilism. The sunglasses nihilism.』   
  
"That makes no sense at all. Are you trying to sound cool? Being too cool for school is my thing, you know." Jun called back at him. 

Medaka was walking just a pace ahead of them.  
As they listened to Jun.  
Medaka said.  
“This girl is a little bit.”  
Junko finished her sentence. ‘Over the top.”  
『Neither of you have any right to say that!』

Jun smiled to herself. ‘She has good friends struggling to keep up with her. I wonder how she found that. Nobody’s managed to keep up with me so far. Some kids have all the luck I swear.” She shook her head. ‘Oh, I know I’ll just befriend her! There was no reason to fight in the first place! Problem solved! I should have thought of this earlier. Stupid Jun. Well she looks like she’s busy right now, so I’ll try it later.”

Kumagawa looked to the side, to see Medaka’s smiling face. He wanted to see a smile at the end of this after all.  『Medaka-chan, you’re just a girl after all huh. You smile just like one.』  
  
“Wow, Kumagawa. Life must be so confusing for you. I’m envious really, to go through life so blind like that not noticing things until they're right in front of you, never knowing what's coming next. It must be fun."   
  
It took him so long, to realize something so obvious.   
Because he was dumb. (That's the joke: Source Matsuda).

『Are you being sarcastic? You can’t learn sarcasm. That’s evolving too quickly.』  
  
“Like bacteria.” Junko joined in.  
  
Medaka looked back at them. “You know what now that I think about it you two are a cute couple.”  
  
『Really?』  
  
“No.”  
  
And ending on that awkward note, with little drama at all, all three of them laughed together.  
Considerably weakened by being around each other.  
Making the wrong choices due to each other's influence.  
Not growing up fast enough.  
But that was youth. 


	29. Thank You for Choosing Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryoko's dialogue is a reference to kingdom hearts!

“Okay, so first there’s Kaiki whose grown up Kumagawa. Then Juzo picks a fight with Hitoyoshi-kun, a grown up guard dog. Then Munakata starts bullying Makoto. Then an even stronger more advanced version of Kamukura shows up in Iihiko. Then we met Kagenui who is grown up Mukuro. Then there’s Aikawa-san whose grown up you. Then we ran into that homeless person who looks like he dressed himself by falling into a thrift store dumpster so that’s Komaeda’s adult self. Right now we’re heading towards Yasuke-kun’s dad. Hey, where’s my adult foil, I’m supposed to be the most important one here!”

It was amazing that Junko had not made the leap to assuming the main character already considering her sense of self importance.  
  
In fact they had already met grown up Junko, but on Izuko’s request that they might kill each other if they ever met Medaka had been keeping that meeting quiet. Which was hard for her because lying was still not that easy to her. When she tried to lie, or even got a little bit stressed she just acted like a weirdo. So instead, she changed the subject.  
  
“Maybe God himself is desperate to keep you occupied. You really ought to have something to do, regardless of what it might be. It seems God is aware of how unpredictable you are when bored.”  
  
“God? Hmph. That’s not like you. If a wonderful guy like him exists than people like you and me would never have been born in the first place.”  
  
“Gods are not omnipotent, after all. Surely he feels responsible for producing a failed creation like you, and has devised various measures to keep you fenced in. So you won’t go destroy the world again in another fit of boredom.”

Japan had hundreds of thousands of gods after all. In their land gods became commonplace, as stories shifted from regions to regions. Perhaps that was why right now the unique, one of a kind girls were casually chatting with one another. That was the problem with the extraordinary, things like super powered highschoolers, super geniuses, non-humans became amazingly commonplace once you got used to them.  
  
That rule was the bane of Junko’s entire existence. Which is why even while talking to Medaka she was furiously tapping away at her phone still. “Seriously don’t @ me.”  
  
“I didn’t say anything… also, we’re in person.” Medaka learned fast, but she was also about two decades behind what was popular with the kids these days. She was an old fashioned girl, a millenial from the 1000s born in the modern era.  
  
“I’m not talking to you, god not everything is about you Medaka-chan. It’s about me obviously. I’ve been beefing on twitter with some @IZUKNOWSEVERYTHING on twitter for the past day and a half and she will not get off my case.”  
  
Apparently even though Izuko wanted to avoid meeting Junko she had no problem starting a twitter feud. Medaka decided that she had nothing to add to that and looked back to Kumagawa. “What do you think, Kumagawa?”

『Well, I decided a long time ago there’s no such thing as god in this world. That’s why I want to use my own power to make everyone smile.』Kumagawa’s smile was pure and genuine, but whenever he showed me such a smile I was unable to rid myself of the impression that it showed his darkness. He said such light hearted things like _I want to save everyone_ with the conviction of a villain.  
  
So you know those three were just idly musing on the concept of god, you know just typical teenage stuff.  
  
“Junko, you know I feel that way too. I know every single time I’ve needed him, Zenkichi has dropped everything to come to my side but I can’t ever remember it being the other way around. I don’t think there was a single time I gave up anything for Zenkichi’s sake.”  
  
“What a terrible way to treat your childhood friend. How could you.” Junko said not looking up. “Wait, you were dead when I said that how did you…”

“I wasn’t that dead. My heart just stopped. I think I might have used a style for a moment just to spark it back up.”  
  
“If you say you used the power of your heart like this is some kingdom hearts bullshit I am going to murder you all over again.”

『Well, it’s good that you learned a style because Kaiki-kun never bothered to teach me one. Just a bunch of dumb life lessons.』  
  
Medaka stopped to look Kumagawa in the eye. “I’m sure Kaiki saw you as a child first, and that’s why he tried to take care of you and stop you from fighting.”

Her sincerity was wasted on someone like Kumagawa. 『That’s lame, I wanted a new super power.』Kumagawa said parking his bicycle bent over it in exhaustion. He had only learned to ride a bike due to the seven years of time looping, but he still lacked the stamina the others had. Also there was a certain spoiled princess he had to keep carrying around everywhere.  
  
They finally reached it, Sandbox general hospital. The hospital which had surveyed abnormal children many years ago as a part of the preliminary stages of the flask plan, a hospital that coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, Junko, Kumagawa and Medaka had all been at at one time or another before meeting later in life.  
  
“Enoshima… if we had met when we were two years old. Do you think we could have been happy?” Medaka, the girl who had no idea how to make others or herself happy even with all the talents in the world asked as she stared up at the broken down ruins.

“I’d be happy at least.” Junko cut down the hope in that statement characteristically quickly. “If we killed each other back then then I would be happy not to be dealing with this current situation.”

『Junko doesn’t want to be happy anyway. She acts all grumpy like we’re just dragging her through this, but she’s an active participant too and I bet if she had a choice she’d still choose for things to end up like this.』  
  
“I already said don’t @ me like that, Misogi!” Really, who did he think he was. She was a princess, they were either bowed down to as rulers or beheaded as tyrants, and then there was one pauper boy who thought he could criticize her like she was some kind of commoner.

At the exact same time, on the other side of the hospital Kamukura, a sleeping Zenkichi on his back, Komaeda, and everybody’s least favorite Matsuda (that’s me) arrived.

“Don’t you think it's unfair that Hitoyoshi-kun gets to ride on your back. He already has his own muscles, he doesn’t need yours as well.” Komaeda said, in a soft voice like a kitten mewling for attention.

“If I can’t carry him like this we would have to leave him behind.” Hinata looked away because he knew the kitten had fangs that would sink into him soon.

‘You’d leave behind your own friend? The one who accepted you after everything you’ve done in the past, despite being far more worthy of being called a hero than you are, superman. You really are doing a terrible job of taking responsibility.” Komaeda smiled, revealing those cute little fangs.  
  
“Just tell me what you want from me!” Kamukura changed the subject looking back to the antioscial boy that was trailing behind them. “BIg brother Matsuda.”  
  
“Yes, I’m Matsuda.”  
  
“You have more experience with neurology then I do, all I have is copied talent that was inserted to my brain.”  
  
“I wonder who's responsible for that.’  
  
“Do you have any idea what might have happened to Hitoyoshi-kun.”  
  
“Oh, you know I’m a neurosurgeon? Are you by any chance a fan of mine?” Matsuda deflected with his usual terrible humor, “He took a bad hit from Juzo, and then when you told him to get soe bed rest he immediately ran after Medaka-chan to the Shiranui village and got his head smashed again it doesn’t exactly take a neurosurgeon to deduce what happened.”  
  
“You shouldn’t belittle your talent, Matsuda-kun. I’m sure your talent has given hope to a lot of other people. Unlike me, you can make up for your despicable actions in the past by revolutionizing the medical field and saving lives to make up for the ones you stepped on.”  
  
“Nagito don’t try the backhanded compliment thing on me, I can guarantee I’m meaner than you.” It was a bad idea for a boy like that to approach a hedgehog, as weak as they might seem they had their spines to protect them.

Just then Kamukura felt a stirring on his back. In his sleep, Zenkichi muttered over and over again. “No good… I’m no good… If this keeps up I won’t be able to stay by Medaka-chan’s side much longer… I have no right to be there if I’m like this.”  
  
The truth was Zenkichi was dreaming of the past. Over the past few days after having his head smashed in by Iihiko, he dreamed the same day over and over again like the loop which Kumagawa Misogi was stuck in during the killing game. Zenkichi always listened to Shiranui for advice, even when she only seemed to have the worst intentions at heart for him. She would embarrass him, she would set him up to fail, and afterwards she would laugh but always Zenkichi would take her for her word. That was the kind of dopey guy he was.

That was why when Shiranui told him the only reason she had ever gotten close to him was because of his relationship to Medaka, he believed her. Not only that but the only reason anybody had gotten close to him, that he had any role in this story at all was because they all just wanted to use him as a stepping stone to reach Medaka. Perhaps he had been listening too much to Komaeda as well.  
  
The day that Zenkichi had lived in his dream over and over for the past few days began again, and Zenkichi found himself away in first period, his first day of school, in the first semester of Sandbox Academy. Back then he just thought Hope’s Peak was just a school of pretentious famous people and deliberately avoided the news and rumors about it because going to a school filled with nothing but extremely talented eccentrics like Medaka sounded terrible to him.Even at the somewhat more normal Sandbox academy though somehow he had ended up sitting next to an eccentric girl.

_Hey, this girl sitting next to me has been eating her boxed lunch since first period. Is she the typical ‘always hungry’ character? She looks so carefree. I think I’d better not get involved with her, for the sake of my new, brilliant high school life._

_Man, this girl is still eating! It reminds me of the glutton Medaka-chan from some time ago. She seems to have having a good time. Oh she’s finally finished? Good grief I’d better focus on the lesson. Is she at it again?_ _  
_

Suddenly the girl in the desk next to him switched out her empty lunch box or a multi layered one. Without any hesitation at all she began to dig in. Zenkichi’s frown twisted up more and more in knotting confusion as he tried to process how such a little girl could fit so much food in her.  
  
_...HUh? But didn’t I already know that she would take that multi-tiered box out? And, I also know that after that she will have another five or six boxes. I know that she’ll have onigiri for desert too._

Zenkichi slammed both of his hands on his desk and forced himself to stare forward. He had come to a startling revelation that made him question the reality before his eyes.

_Am I… stalking this girl?_ _  
_

There was a reason that Zenkichi had been stuck in this dream so many times. He was an adorable little dumbass. That’s what he gets for working out all those muscles on his well chiseled body when he should have been studying. I guess for Zenkichi though his biggest muscle is his heart, damnit, he’s still got me beat.  
  
Zenkichi shook his head suddenly. _No, instead of knowing it would happen I should say it’s like I’m remembering it. Ah, isn’t this that day in april when Shiranui and I… became friends? Well, maybe I shouldn’t say we really became friends._ _  
_ _Is this a spinning lantern? Because I was wounded… because I lost so pathetically twice in a row._

So much for becoming a main character. He was basically the character that got finished off early to demonstrate how powerful the new villain was. Such a person could never stay by Medaka’s side, but bothering hi more than that was the fact that… the one normal friend he thought he had, the one person he thought liked him outside of Medaka…  
  
That person was just another connection to Medaka. It was starting to feel like he was inseparable from that girl, every part of him was tied to her in a way. Even when he betrayed her, he did it for her sake, so he could continue standing by her side. Yet it was impossible for him to see that the other side existed, without Zenkichi Medaka would still exist, but without Medaka there was no Zenkichi.

Not only that but because he was such a Medaka obsessed idiot, he never noticed that the person he claimed to be his best friend was pretending all along, hiding her real feelings. What were they even? Was she angry? Sad? Jealous? Did she have fun? He just took it for granted, he did not even think that it was weird that Shiranui always seemed to be involved in Medaka’s business. Of course he would not it was only natural that Medaka be the center of the world, because that was how it was like for him.  
  
He failed to see Shiranui as her own person. He never even questioned it once, he never even tried, he simply accepted it as is. That was why he had no right at all to complain that Shiranui was only using him to get close to Medaka. What was it Kumagawa had said to him once? The strings tying them all together had become too twisted and because of that he just wanted to burn them all and start fresh. Perhaps that was why his mind showed him this dream over and over again. Just start again from the beginning, when everything was simple, before abnormals, minuses, despairs, and the end of the world.  
  
Just a story of a boy meeting a girl on the first day of school and becoming close to her through some accident. That kind of simple cliche. Even if he could go back from the beginning though, it would still all turn out the same in the end.

 _She was just here for work… What kind of job was it? Did she have fun, even once?_ Suddenly something fell into his sight. An eraser that was carelessly tossed in front of Zenkichi. _The eraser… The eraser?_ Zenkichi repeated showing his stellar insight from all that effort he put into working out his brain muscles.

_Ah, right. Yeah i remember now. I know what’ll happen now. I’ll pick up that eraser and that will be the excuse for the two of us to talk. That’s just her plan, get close to the childhood friend of Medaka-chan. Huh…? Then what if i, didn’t pick up the eraser on that day right now?_

He was not so stupid to say that he believed he had traveled back in time or anything. If he even attempted a plot like time travel, Kumagawa would yell at him. Perhaps though since this was just a dream if he made a different choice it would show him a different future. Even if it was just in the world of dreams… one where they could have all ended up happy together as a trio, instead of torn apart and confused like they were now. Could it show him even the possibility, that things might work out, that they could still stay tied together without the strings becoming knotted? Or from the moment they chose to be tied together, was it nothing more than a noose slowly enclosing around his neck.  
  
Every single time before this, Zenkichi had hesitated to decide and in that moment the dream rebooted again and he forgot his realization and that he was simply reliving the first day of school. It was almost like his mind itself was saying it was pointless. _What’s the point in me choosing if no matter what, everything’s going to go wrong? What’s the point of thinking about happier days if they all turned out so miserable._ That’s right Shiranui’s hometown was slaughtered, she was going to be taken away by that fake Junko. Zenckihi was not even involved in that plotlie, or in Junko’s, there might be nothing he could do about it even if he woke up. Shiranui would continue to suffer all on her own, and she probably did not want the help of a fake friend.  
  
That day during the school festival where they all sung up on stage seemed so far away. Zenkichi was hoping once Medaka and Shiranui started to get along he could take them back and enjoy that day again as a trio. To stand upon that stage once more… but Shiranui was just an actor, the whole school was a stage for her. And he had no idea what was going on with her, was she a ninja? A bodyguard? He was… entirely unrelated to the plotline.

_Ven if I don’t pick that eraser up now, Shiraui will just take another route to make contact with Medaka-chan. I had nothing to do with this from the beginning. So I don’t even have to choose. This is just a dream anyway, there’s no need for me to pick it up, it’s not like history will change, Shiranui and I would just keep being unrelated._

_“Don’t be offeneded Hitoyoshi-kun, about the fact that I never thought of you as a friend.”_ _  
_

Shiranui’s voice whispered into his ears. Yeah, he was unneeded, it would all go wrong no matter what he did, Shiranui’s village would still be dead and all the time she spent miserable and alone without her two supposed friends noticing her feelings would still be there but… but… _So it’s like that, huh? Well I thought of you as a friend!_

He reached forward and grabbed the eraser suddenly. The dream did not reset this time. “Hey, hey! So I take it that this is a chalelnge seeing as you dropped an eraser in front of me!? Kah! It seems like you don’t know about the man who they called “erase man!” the one who mastered the skill of the ancient eraser. Alright then challenge accepted! I’ll bring my own eraser tomorrow! I’m Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, who are you?”  
  
Shiranui’s mouth fell open in shock and she even dropped her rice ball. Her hand waved flippantly through the air, she laughed the moment off. “Ahyahyahya! You sure are a big idiot, aren’t you? Hello Eraseman! THis is funny let’s get along well, HItoyoshi. Well my name is…”  
  
_I know. Your name is Shiranui Hansode. From now on we’ll be friends._ At that moment in the present time Hitoyoshi’s eyes finally opened. It was not just a conveniently timed revelation in his dream that brought him back to reality though, suddenly his head had stopped pounding quiet as much. As if he had never been hit in the first place.

Opening his eyes he glanced to the side catchign his reflection in the mirror. The bandages left on his face from the wound Juzo gave him had completely vanished. “Something’s wrong… your hair…” He murmured into Hinata’s ear.  
  
Hinata immediately grew self conscious on reflex instead of assessing the situation. “What’s wrong with my hair? Do you think it looks better short is that what you’re trying to say? I knew nobody liked me like this…”  
  
They would probably prefer it if he was wearing the much more sociable face of Hajime. He should probably put more effort into seeming like Hajime, but if he put on an act to please others would that be reclaiming his true self like he had tried so hard to do? However, Zenkichi’s words had not been to give him an existential crisis.  
  
Just then Hinata looked in one of the broken glass windows seeing his own reflection. Looking back was not Kamukura, or a boy with mismatched eyes, it was a boy with spiky brown hair and a face that could have been swapped out with anybody else from the rest of the human race, wearing a button up shirt and a tie. Hajime stared back at him. Not only that, Kamukura’s hair had grown shorter and he was no longer tying it up, and Komaeda was no longer wearing his glasses and he wore his school uniform again. It was like walking down this hallway, all of them had taken a step back in time.  
  
At the other side of the hospital, Kumagawa, Junko and Medaka were still casually conversing.

“I’m surprised you disguised yourself as Junko so easily back there. You seemed pretty comfortable for your first time wearing a skirt.” Medaka said.

『Please, Junko’s way too into herself for that to have been my first time dressing up as her. We’ve totally roleplayed for-』  
  
“For what?” Medaka’s face was the picture of innocence.

『C-cosplay! It was friend cosplay! It was nothing forget I said anything. It’s all just nonsense!』

Medaka was able to forget about it just as easily, changing the subject. “I don’t think you need to worry about meeting your adult self, Enoshima.”  
  
“Nah I figured it’s pretty much impossible for anybody who has a brain like mine to grow up anyway. I always assumed I would either kill myself, or end the world, or both by the time I turned twenty.”  
  
Medaka looked at Ensohima’s negativity like it was a math equation that would not compute. “I get it… then if you don’t have a model for how somebody would be an adult and grow up with a brain like yours, then you can be the first one!”

“Pass.” Junko responded immediately, before glancing around. “Hey, haven’t you two idiots noticed that these walls look a little sameish. I”m all for the ruined hospital setting but we passed through this hallway three times and familiar scenery is boring. This place is built like a maze, it might even be shifting the hallways as we speak.”

『This place is definitely eerie, even for me and Junko, and I’m a walking nightmare and she a nightmare fetishist.』  
  
“Don’t call it eerie, Kumagawa. This place is full of memories. It’s where we first met, and Zenkichi as well, remember?” In one moment Medaka’s hair was short and tied up at the side and then when she looked back again it was long just as it had been when she first entered high school.  
  
『Yeah, it’s a place full of memories for me too. This is where I first met my beloved older sister Mukuro-chan and made a precious memory with her.』  
  
“Wait a second I can’t ignore that, Misogi-senpai! What kind of memories did you make wth my sister?” Junko snapped grabbing his shoulders from behind and shaking him. A moment later though, she changed her mind on what she was feeling and looked around with vacant eyes. “Yeah, now that I think about it I came here once too, but somebody ruined my fun by destroying this place before I even had the chance freaking kill steal.”

Medaka turned away from them and kept walking forward, wearing the Sandbox school uniform she had abandoned awhile ago. “It should be this way. The director's room is located at the fourth floor of this ward.”

『I was here for a day, so I don’t remember anything. Maybe we should have asked Shibuki-chan. In fact going to a ruined hospital would probably make a good date for Mikan-chan, it its her serial killer spooky nurse aesthetic.』

“Hey, Medaka-chan I have a question why are we even here? You can just figure out styles by using the end, right? There’s no use use in dragging us along.” Junko said as she folded her arms behind her head looking more apathetic.  
  
“I can’t master a style using The End. I actually saw it being used on me by Kaiki-kun, but it doesn’t look like I can use it just by imitation. Well, Enoshima I assume you’re just here to watch the show unfold. I can’t speak for Kumagawa though, it’s odd he seems to have grown past the days he just followed me around challenging me to fights but… he’s still here. You could have gone back to Hope’s Peak after what happened to Kaiki, nobody would blame you.”

『It’s not like I’m here to play hero or anything. You’re right I’d much rather just go back to school rather than chase after your dumb friend but…』He looked forward, eyes completely purified of their blue color leaving only dull grey rings behind. Colorless eyes lacking any expression. “Well, there’s something I want to do but it’s a secret…!”  
  
Kumagawa had stopped attaching himself to Medaka. He neither saw her as a symbol of perfection, or wanted to destroy her, he no longer looked with envy at her happiness. She was just a normal girl. Only from a distance could he see that for the first time. But he was still dragged into Medaka’s miadvetures, and Kumagawa was not somebody to cooperate with others. Even with Junko to which he was attached, he only seemed to do what he wanted in the end. Komaeda for hope, Junko for despair, Kumagawa for himself. Komaeda for despair, Junko for hope, Kumagawa for himself again. Medaka and Zenkichi for their friends, Kamukura for his fellow ultimate despairs, Matsuda for his love, Kumagawa for himself. As he playfully alluded to his desires, Kumagawa pressed a finger to his lips in a light _sssshing_ motion the corners of his smile curling up on either side of the finger.

As they turned the corner, Kumagawa noticed something finally. Junko had made them stop at another convenience store to redye her hair again, because walking around with her natural red hair was apparently social suicide, which was worse than real suicide somehow. She was oddly self conscious for such a self confident girl, but then again as long as it had the word ‘self’ in it, that trait could be used to describe the overwhelmingly self obsessed Junko.  
  
Which is why Kumagawa found it strange when he noticed a flash of red in Junko’s hair.

『Junko you missed a spot when you bleached your hair.』  
  
“Wait, are you serious where?”

『Like, all of it.』

Junko turned around quickly to check herself in one of the cracked glass windows. Looking at her reflection, Enoshima saw despair. Reflecting in the mirror was a simply plain, norma, and uninteresting female high school student. One with red hair worn down, and her hope’s peak uniform.  
  
Junko reached for her makeup instinctively to reapply it. Kumagawa had to grab her from behind to drag her away from the mirror.

『We don’t have time for that Junko, I think something’s happening. Just pick one, despair or your vanity!』  
  
“But I love them both so much it’s impossible to choose!” Just like Zenkichi, Junko was facing a choice which defined her as a person, a much, much shallower person.  
  
In the mirror holding Junko back currently was not Kumagawa with his hair shaved at the sides, wearing a Junko love sweater, but rather the shaggy haired shadow of a boy that Junko had first met at his transfer to Hope’s Peak, wearing a black Fish Tank Academy uniform.  
  
Walking ahead of them significantly further down the hallway Medaka finally turned back around. The Medaka they both saw was not the current Medaka, but rather that one from middle school Kumagawa had encountered, with twin tails in her hair.  
  
“Ummm, pig tails are my thing! They’ve been my aesthetic all my life, what do you think you’re doing copying me? You’re not enough of a knock-off half price bargain bin Junko rip off already?” Junko said, with her priorities in order as usual.  
  
At that moment just as they were coming to the realization, the two parties of teenagers met each other at opposite ends of the hallway.  
  
Zenkichi saw the younger Medaka with twin tails and an unbreakable look in her eyes.  
  
Medaka sa Zenkichi’s middle school self. His chuunibiyou stage where he dyed his hair black and posed as a delinquient.  
  
Hinata was back to looking like Kamukura with two red eyes and a completely still face.  
  
Komaeda looked like he had when he first came to Hope’s Peak, a green jacket, the same lost boy who washed up on jabberwock.

Yasuke saw the Kumagawa who he had first met at Hope’s Peak, the wild unstable with his arms wrapped around Ryoko.

Junko saw Matsuda, with his shirt stained by his own blood and the wound she had left in his side. The beautiful Matsuda who had downed in his own misery that she stomped into a corpse.  
  
“Hey… Wh… Wh… Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!? We’ve all gotten younger!” They said at the same time.  
  
“Is it because we all have memories of this hospital that some kind of oddity is occuring? Even I visited here for a day once.” Komaeda was the first to observe the situation.  
  
“Um… yes. I totally came to this hospital too, because I was also an abnormal child.” Kamukura spoke, but it was Hajime’s insecure and wobbling voice that came out. “I’m still relevant.”  
  
“Don’t pretend that you came to this hospital when you were just a boring nobody because you want to feel included!” Yasuke snapped at Hinata, before looking around at everyone. “My dad worked here, Zenkichi’s mom did, Medaka was a test subject, Junko, Komaeda, Kumagawa all visited for a day but Hinata didn’t and he’s still getting younger so it can’t be that. Then this is… a style attack?”

At that moment Medaka undid one of her pigtails to go back to her old hairstyle, and even someone as patient as her had her limits when it came to Junko’s constant negativity. The moment she tried to analyze the situation though, she saw a small girl running down a hallway laughing. Most would assume considering the haunted hospital setting that this was a sight to avoid, but Medaka instantly recognized the silhouette of her small, lost child of a friend Shiranui. The friend she had never really been friends with.  
  
“Shiranui! Wait up for me, we just need to talk things out without interruption and it will go right this time.”  
  
Medaka said as she ran after the girl.  
  
“Are you an idiot? That’s such an obvious trap! What do you need a big flashing sign with neon lights, god you are all such easy marks for the killing game. Why am I so gracriously keeping you alive?” Junko was either genuinely concerned or she thought that this haunted hospital setting was proceeding far too predictably. Either way Medaka ignored her to chase after the disappearing Shiranui. The moment that she did, Zenkichi jumped off of Kamukura’s back.  
  
“Wait, Zenkichi did you have a chuunibiyou phase in middle school? Did you ever feel like talking about Tanaka-kun about it? I never knew a good boy like you had such a rebellious streak. What’s this hidden backstory, you’ve been concealing from us?” Komaeda teased.  
  
Rather than respond, Zenkichi turned his back and ran off after Medaka. “Can’t explain, gotta run.” He was totally not fleeing an embarrassing situation. “Besides I’m not one of those guys who needs to rely on made up things, and spouting lines that only sound cool without making sense, I’m already devi cool!”  
  
At that exact time Kamukura stumbled backwards. As he did his hair disappeared and he was the unknown boy who washed up on Jabberwock once more. He took a step further back and he was the world destroyer, wearing a black uniform with two red eyes. He looked uneasily in the windows surrounding him, and from four different he saw four different himselves looking back. The world destroyer, the boy who did not know his talent, the Ultimate Hope, and the boy wth no talent at all. They all looked back at him from different angles, and suddenly it was like the whole world became tilted at an odd angle.  
  
He was losing his balance. Kamukura gripped his face, and he saw in a mirror with a fractured crack running exactly down the center, there were two of him looking back. Kamukura on the right side and Hajime on the left side, with the crack running down the middle of their face and even then the two faces stitched together were slightly uneven. He gripped the side of his face harder, trying to push the two sides together so they would not fall apart.

“I can’t go back, no matter what happens I can’t go back to those days. I don’t want to be that person anymore.”  
  
Hinata Haijme did what he always did, when forced to look at himself. He closed his eyes and ran in the opposite direction, disappearing down the hallway.  
  
“Hinata-kun, no! You’ll get lost!” Komaeda reacted just as fast. He stretched out his hand reaching out to try to catch the boy and stop him, only to hesitate at the last moment. He looked at his shaking, empty hand, and then closed the fingers around nothing. “No… that’s no good. Being lost is a lonely thing, HInata-kun. That’s why you shouldn’t run away.” Komaeda ran after him too, without thinking at all. If he thought about it too hard, if he started to think, if he tried to speak, he would probably ruin it.  
  
So Komaeda Nagito did what he always did. He chased the single point of light he saw in the distance, trying to surrender himself over to it without thinking at all.

Just a few moments after the two groups had met up again, and all that was left was Kumagawa, Junko, and Matsuda, the terrible toddler trio. They would probably be toddlers soon if they kept charging forward blindly into this strange style trap.  
  
However, Matsuda could not think at all. Not just because he was a stupid idiot who never learned, but the moment he saw Ryoko staring back at him, and looked down to see his own shirt stained with dried blood he was no longer a part of this moment. The entire world had washed away from him like water, all of the details scrubbed away until they became nothing more than faded colors.

_“I-In the end...everything went just as planned...from the very beginning straight to the end..."_

_Matsuda spoke to that girl as well. While speaking, his consciousness was beginning to fade away, and just standing appeared to be a struggle. But even so, his frail gaze continued to focus on that girl._ _  
_

_"B-But there's one thing I don't understand...why you planned such a troublesome turn of events. Why you went so far to have me take away your memory...in order to escape investigation from the school...it doesn't sound pleasant at all...but even so, you were able to push through all of it. T-Then why..."_ _  
_

_Failing to keep his ground, he finally sat down. But Matsuda continued his interrogation, resolute on obtaining his answer._ _  
_

_"W-Was it to...p-pull me, who was always thinking of you, into despair?"_

_That girl then began to finally move._ _  
_

_She gently caressed his face with her hand in an almost lovingly way, and sat down next to him, paying no matter to the blood spread around the area._ _  
_

_She then drew Matsuda's face, whose eyes were beginning to drift away, towards her own, and whispered._ _  
_

_I'll tell you._ _  
_

_That whisper was filled with a gentle feeling love, but it soon radically changed._ _  
_

_"Are you fucking kidding me? Don't get so ahead of yourself! There's no way in hell I'd go through this pain in the ass mess just to bring you into despair! What the hell are you thinking!?"_

_As soon as those words finished, that girl immediately thrusted her hand away from Matsuda's face._ _  
_

_Doing so, Matsuda collapsed onto the pool of blood he created._ _  
_

_"Y-You don't give a damn...is what you're saying, huh..."_ _  
_

_Matsuda muttered those words as he laid on his back gazing towards the ceiling._

_Staring at that face from straight above was that girl. Their faces were close enough for the tips of their noses to easily touch. But even so, his gaze didn't exactly match up with hers, as it began to absent-mindedly falter._ _  
_

_"I guess...I don't have anything to with this...t-that really was the case after all..."_

That was right. He loved Junko so much. He was always thinking about her. So so much, he had forced himself to stop thinking to try to forget it. And she took that love. And she stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomped. Stomed. Stomed. Stomped.

_Matsuda's soul was falling into the depths of despair._

_His own meaning of life was thoroughly and decisively violated, and was then rejected._

_He had completely given in to despair._

_"P-Please...respond..."_

_His clinging words barely formed into words at all._

_"C'mon...what's your answer...Junko Enoshima..."_

_That was the end._

_Without ever hearing his answer, Yasuke Matsuda died._

_Completely submerged in despair, he died._  
  
He died drowning in a pool of his own blood, of his own misery. Junko was the one who cradled his head against her bosom like it was her most precious thing, and then forced him under the water so she could watch the way his face changed as he drown through the transparent barrier of the water between them. But that was fine since she had planned this from the start. She saved his life as a child and allowed him to live all that time, so he could die as her irreplaceable thing.  
  
If that was true. If that was true. Then why was he being replaced right now? They were all reset to their younger selves, he was even being shown Ryoko again, the Ryoko he had tried to destroy with his own very two hands.  
  
So why was her arms around someone else right now? Being forced to stare at it, unable to look away, he could not forget. It was stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp-ing on his brain until there was nothing left. His mind disappeared and he could not think of anything at all.Yasuke turned around and ran.  
  
“Matsuda-kun! Where are you going?”  
  
Junko cried out in Ryoko’s voice, just hearing it made him wince.  
  
“Your face is just so ugly I can’t stand looking at it anymore.” Matsuda yelled without looking back.  
  
“Are you all idiots? Fine, split up and search for clues in the spooky hospital and then get picked off one by one by the serial killer see if I care.”

『Junko, this isn’t the time for genre-awareness. If we leave Yasuke-chan, he’ll be suffering all alone. You at least want to see him miserable, right? He’s your important friend who you spent so much time with so you could taste despair right?』  
  
Kumagawa tugged at her hand.  
Junko let herself give into him, and be dragged along.  
She was giving into him more and more lately. Medaka had a point, what was that? Why was she even here?  
Was she really nothing more than just a spectator?  
What was she choosing to do in this moment?  
If she did not choose she would just be a still doll getting dragged along by Kumagawa’s hand, but even if he kept reaching out for her, eventually the weight of her dragging along would get to be too much. It was only natural, they were separate people, living alone was hard enough for Kumagawa he could not keep doing this for the both of them even if he wanted.  
Then what, would she just become still again?  
Unmoving, Unable to be moved.  
The pain she inflicted on Matsuda was supposed to be enough to tear her heart in two for a lifetime, by destroying that irreplaceable part of herself. Yet seeing the past him right now her heart was barely moved. The pain she had thought would last a lifetime, and even worked for fifteen years to cultivate evaporated in a few months.  
Maybe Matsuda was right and she was just a cold bitch after all.  
One who never really cared that much about others.  
Unrelated. Unconnected. Severed from everything.  
She could see the strings between other people so easily and navigate between them but maybe that was just because there had never been a string connected to her in the first place.

 

😈

 

 

As Yasuke ran down the hallway, the dried blood from his shirt disappeared. His body rejuvenated, getting younger and younger, and his mind too ran further away into the past. The two months that he had not told anybody about, even the audience he was narrating to.

He had shut out those times completely. The two months before the story even began, the days when Kumagawa suddenly appeared in his life. The strange transfer student he almost became friends with. I mean can you imagine being friends with Kumagawa? Terrifying. No wonder he was repressing it moreso than any other trauma.  
  
In the cracked windows that were lined up on both sides of the hallway, it appeared whether he wanted it too or not, like a movie being played on a projector screen when his eyes were forced open by metal clamps. The memories of the past. Of two boys chatting like normal students, and not like partners who were co-conspiring against Hope’s Peak together.

『Hey, Yasuke-chan how come you never smile. Even when you’re getting all lovey dovey with the girl you love, it’s like you’re not enjoying it at all. Do you think it’s cool not to smile?』  
  
“Why would I smile around a guy like you? It’s miserable just having to be in the same room as you, Shitty river.”

『I guess that’s true. If I could disappear, and you and Ryoko-chan could go off on your honeymoon together then that’d probably be for the best… awe, but then I wouldn’t get to see you smile.』  
  
“I don’t get you at all.” Matsuda finally put his manga volume down on the table. Kumagawa sat at the other end of the office, on the mattress where Ryoko usually set. He wore an innocent smile as if he was completely unaware of the rest of the world like she always did. “Why are you even helping me? Concealing what Junko did, risking the whole school by protecting her is clearly the wrong thing to do. You should have ratted me out the moment you figured out what I was doing.”

『Awe, but Yasuke-chan why would I do that when you trusted me? Even if it was the right thing to do for everyone else, it’s the wrong thing to do for you.』  
  
“Yeah, but I’m not important. Do you even grasp what’s going on here? People have died, people keep dying and we can’t even stop it or keep up. This is… if this is the best we can do we should not have even tried in the first place.”

『Well, I’m incompetent, but I don’t know you’re pretty smart. If it’s you I’m sure-』  
  
“I’m not important enough! I can’t… I can’t keep risking everything for somebody insignificant like me. You think they’re all going to go, ‘oh well he cries about his mommy a lot so I guess it’s okay that all those people died’.”

『You already said you’re not important… Yasuke-chan did you think they were ever going to look at what happened to us in the first place? The world already averted their eyes from what happened to us, we were already lost to begin with. Just lost children. Unrelated. Unattached.』  
  
“Shut up.”

『No, no, Yasuke-chan I was just saying. The world doesn’t care about what your motivations are, or whether or not you’re happy. Whether you do one thing or the other they won’t care. So… why not just do what makes you happy?』  
  
“I knew it. You just don’t care about what happens. You really are just some kind of sicko along for the ride. You’re just telling me to keep trying because you want to watch me suffer… right?”  
  
In a few steps Yasuke had crossed the gap between them and was standing over Kumagawa. Kumagawa tilted his head back and he saw Yasuke’s face centimeters away from his, over him, eclipsed. Before he knew it he was staring at Matsuda-kun. He had soft, smooth hair, and narrow eyes pepeing out from behind it. Girlsihgly long eyelashes, and a pointed chin. THin, small lips and…  
  
“Gross, stop looking at me, everything about you is ugly, even your eyes are ugly.”  
  
And a sharp tongue.

『Yasuke-chan, what you’re really thinking is ‘there’s no way someone like me could have ended up happy. I’m stupid for wanting it in the first place’ but that’s wrong. Isn’t it just as possible that this could end in a way that everyone, Ryoko-chan, Enoshima-san and you are happy?』

“No shut up. Don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me when everything’s starting to go wrong that we could still be happy.” Yasuke stumbled backwards. “I’m not someone like you I just can’t not give a damn about anyone else.”

『It’s not like they care about your feelings. The world was never going to allow you to be happy, so I think it’s okay for you to fight for what makes you happy.』Kumagawa suddenly reached his hands forward. He caught the sides of Matsuda’s face before he could fall back any farther.  
  
He stared at him. No, he had never stopped. Kumagawa’s expression did not change once, and he would not look away no matter how bad things got, or how many insults Yasuke hurled at him. An eccentric transfer student, he seemed unconnected to everything and anything, unattached, the same way Ryoko was but he did not have his memory as an excuse. Yet even now he had a single point of connection as he held onto Yasuke.  
  
He stared at him. HIs face was unhealthily pale, and he had long, narrow eyes. HIs black hair curved towards his eyes. He had girlish eyelashes. The same pointed chin, Sall, thin lips. This is Yasuke-chan’s ace.  
  
But this man’s face- somehow it looked lonely.

『Besides, there’s something I care about. Don’t just go telling me my feelings because you’re smarter than me, you sickening elite. I care about you two.』  
  
“Y-you’re so weird.”

『What? I think it’s normal. If I could see you at the end, smile your true smile because you were able to protect Enoshima-san with all of your heart then I want to hope for that ending.』

“You don’t care about hope at all, you’re just saying those nice sounding words without even caring about them. Y-you’re just, you’re too messed up for me to believe what you’re saying. It’s not normal for somebody to be able to go through this situation without freaking out.”

『Yeah, I guess. I’m sorry Yasuke-chan. I know this is a pathetic excuse but… I wish I could show you that I cared in a normal way.』

Kumagawa finally let go of him, and even though he knew his smile would only unsettle the boy further, he kept on smiling to try and reassure him. That was all he ever did, that was all he knew how to do.

“D-don’t get any more involved than you are with this, Kumagawa.”

『Yeah I know, I’ll probably just make things worse.』  
  
“No I… I…”

 _After this is all over, if it really is possible for me and Junko to come out of this alive._ _  
_ _I don’t want you to get dragged down because of me._ _  
_ _Because I know for sure, even though you’ve been helping me. Even though you don’t care about right or wrong and just want to see me happy for your own twisted reasons._ _  
_ _Even though we’ve been getting along these past two months._ _  
_ _You might not betray me._ _  
_ _But I’d betray you and sell you out_ _  
_ _even if it meant only getting enough to buy one more day of Junko’s safety._ _  
_ _  
_ 『Yasuke-chan it’s fine! It’s normal to want to see your friends smile isn’t it?』  
  
“Yeah, but we’re not friends.”

『You’re already miserable all the time so I think even you deserve a shot at being happy.』  
  
“I’m only miserable because you keep annoying me.”

 _Just give up on me already._ _  
_ _There’s something warped about you. It’s like you expect my betrayal._ _  
_ _If this keeps going I’ll hurt you just like everybody else did._ _  
_ _That’s why… Don’t get involved._ _  
_ _Just keep your distance._ _  
_ _If I can just solve this on my own and protect Junko on my own._ _  
_ _I…_ _  
_ _I want to try to become friends after this._

You could tell mentally I was in a bad place and just about to lose my mind from the stress because I seriously thought it was a good idea to be friendly with Kumagawa. Oh well, everybody has regrets in the past, that’s life. However, being haunted by physical and symbolic manifestations of your regret, now that’s a story.  
  
As Matsuda turned the corner, he was cut off by Kumagawa who had gotten ahead of him somehow. This place really was like a maze. Not that Yasuke cared, he was already lost right from the start, the more he struggled, the harder he ran, he just got more and more lost.  
  
Then, right there in front of him, to always throw it back in his face was Kumagawa MIsogi. “You, you, you… why was it you?”

『Yasuke-chan I don’t think this is the time for more of your teenage love drama-』  
  
“That’s not what I’m talking about!”

At that moment whatever string was holding Yasuke back snapped. The strings he thought were so special and important, the one wrapped around his pinky that guided him when he was a lost child in an indifferent world, the one thing he thought he had to hold onto was never a string to begin with. The only reason it was bright red was because it was dripping in blood. One long bloody string that had become wrapped around him, that pulled him into further bloodshed, and yet he could not let go because it was all he had. Even if this red string became nothing more than a noose around his neck, he would be fine with that as long as he could still be connected to something.

  
Otherwise what was it all for? Why had his mother died? Why he had kept on living without her? What had he been living for up until this point, why had he killed others even to continue living with that person? If it was all going to lead to nothing, to a bad ending, if that string could be cut so easily then why… why… why…

『Yasuke-chan, I--』  
  
“Stop talking when you don’t even know anything at all.”

Kumagawa was no longer standing in front of him. It was just that thing. That irritating thing. He grabbed him by the collar, and slammed his knee into his stomach to get him to be quiet. His voice was irritating, he just wanted to shut him up that was all. His appearance was an eyesore, he wished he could make him disappear too.  
  
“I’m jealous, I'm at the losing end of a love triangle… god, it’s not even about that. It’s not about being loved. It’s amazing how much you can talk like you understand other people’s feelings when you know nothing. I’ve never met a guy as impudent as you.”  
  
He grabbed the pained about to collpase Kumagawa by the hair, and dragged him to the wall so he could slam his head against it. Then again. Then again. “You’re just so stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Even I can’t do anything about it. As a neurologist I recommend you lobotomize yourself, so you don’t have to keep living aware of how terribly unfixable you are.”

『Yasuke-chan.』  
  
“Quit referring to me in such a friendly manner. You don’t get it at all! Why being around you only ever hurts me!”

『Because I took Junko....』  
  
“No, I don’t care about whose dating who! Why are you good enough for Junko to try to change herself? Why would she start to change or you, but not for me. Me whose been there her entire life!?”  
  
That was it.  
It was just a repeat of their parents all over again. For both Kumagawa and Matsuda, they weren’t enough. Their needs weren’t enough for their parents to stick around for them. Their parents made no attempt at all to get better for their sake, because they needed them, they only crumbled.  
  
And then it repeated again. Even though Matsuda had spent his entire life by Junko’s side, that was still not enough. She could not forget about despair to become the person that he needed. If Junko had died drowning in despair as well, than maybe he could have been okay with that. Because it meant Junko was unfixable from the beginning, that there was never any hope for her.  
  
Somehow it was worse, watching it unfold before his own eyes. It turned out there was hope in the first place, just not for him. Junko could try to improve herself, but not for him. His parents did not try to be stronger when he needed them to be, Junko did not try to be stronger when he needed her to be.  
  
It was just him, wasn’t it? He wasn’t good enough for anybody to even bother trying. And he had to watch in front of his own eyes, Junko try to change. So it wasn’t that she could not change, it was just she could not change for him.  
  
That was what Mukuro and Yasuke were trying to reconcile. That was the pain Kumagawa had inflicted on both of them. Her sister, his precious person, who had abused them her whole life could try to stop abusing others apparently, just not for them.

『What the hell is that all about? You’re mad because Junko’s not being horribly abusive towards me? Is that what you want? I know… I know I’m stupid but at least I try to understand how others feel. Right from the beginning, it’s just Junko, Junko, Junko, that’s all you give a damn about.』  
  
At that time, a shadow stained Kumagawa’s perfect white smile - the same pitch black color that stained the rest of his body. His smile wriggled back and forth like it was a living thing separate from him, a parasite that could crawl off his face at any time. Then, that smile disappeared and Yasuke finally saw it on Kumagawa’s face. He saw the emotions that they boy had been concealing behind his smile all along. It was alone; it was despicable; it was burned; it was a mistake; it was envy; it was pity ; it was apathy ; it was fallen ; it was malefic; it was macabre; it was despair; and therefore it was empty.  
  
He spoke in a voice that distilled all of them at once, to their absolute limit.

『Well, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being your punch bag every time.』Kumagawa caught him by the hand before Yasuke could move again, and threw Yasuke easily over his shoulder. The two boys again began to tumble into a fight. They felt like they were being pulled into it, inevitably, like how the tide can drag a person out to see to drown even in completely calm looking waters.

Yeah, that was right. In the past they had fought like this too, while they waited for Ryoko to show up, and while Emukae watched, Kumagawa remembered the ending of this scene which finished with his neck all twisted around but he had failed to mention the beginning.

『It’s easy! If I dig this screw into your eye, you’ll forget about everythiiiiiiiing that happened and you won’t want to kill Enoshima-san and Ryoko-chan anymore! Then we can start again and aim for the happening ending this time.』  
  
At that moment Yasuke picked up his scalpel and slashed it wildly at Kumagawa’s face. Kumagawa sidestepped his blow, his expression not changing at all. It’s not that he did not care, he just looked like he did not understand the fact that Yasuke tried to slash him.

『Hey, Yasuke-chan. Why are you so angry?』  
  
“Don’t you get it!?”

『I don’t. I just wanted to make Ryoko-chan’s wish come true, protect her little world and yet you...』  
  
“And in order to do that! In order to do something as trivial as that you wouldn’t mind if this whole school got destroyed? You don’t mind everyone who’s died so far you can just forget?”

『Exactly.』Kumagawa had been dodging the wild slashes that Yasuke made, even though Yasuke was being serious and aiming for his throat, and other critical blood vessels located among the body. Then suddenly Kumagawa appeared in his blindspot, and his face was centimeters away like he did not even understand the concept of personal space or the boundaries between people at all. Formless. Shapeless. Having a human body did not suit him at all, it seemed to hold him back, like he was nothing more than a bunch of liquid that had been shoved sloppily into a doll just to give him some kind of container. Even with a container however, he kept leaking out, it was seeping out of all his joints and cracks, it looked like the pitch black mud that could clog up a river.『You find that strange? Am I being weird again? I don’t really know. Well, I guess it is definitely strange. Kumagawa MIsogi exists both here and nowhere. Your description was accurate, Yasuke-chan. 』  
  
As Kumagawa’s fingers closed around his neck, Yasuke’s vision started to go black.S omehow that was not any different at all from staring down the boy in front of him. 『You see I don’t really know who I am anymore. These past three years, my only purpose in life has been to see a certain someone again. You know, in order to survive, I used every piece of myself, I let others touch every part of me. I did a lot of awful things. Things you would consider disgusting. ANd because of all that, little by little I reached a point where...』  
  
Yasuke had been waiting all this time for the mask to come off, but it was not just on mask. Every moment, seamlessly, he just switched between masks as it suited him. He knew he was unnecessary, the only person who had ever found him had disappeared from his world. He ripped her face off. And as a consequence he was starting to forget what his own face looked like. He knew he was unnecessary, but he wanted to be around others still. If he did not stay around others he would become lost again.

So he tried to fix himself. He tried to erase every flaws and instead war a perfect, seamless mask. He wanted to be somebody others could depend on, he wanted to be exactly what they needed to him, he wanted to do everything he could to make the others smile around him. Because he knew he was unnecessary, because he knew he added nothing at all to their lives.  
  
He was a child who had not been saved, and had lived unrelated to others so of course he knew nothing about relating to others.  Yet he still wanted to save everyone around him, so there would be no one like himself in the world. Maybe… to prove it was possible that a person like him could have been saved if someone had just tried hard enough. That there was a reason to save him, that something good could even come out of someone like him.

He did not know how though, he did not know the first thing about human kindness, or softness. He had been dealing with hard, sharp edges of glass all his life, he could probably cut himself on wool just because he did not know any better. So his solution was merely to pretend. There was no need for someone like him anyway, so he might as well erase this thing called himself.

He had no idea so he simply pretended. He wore the masks of what they would need in that moment, and then from one moment to the next, changing upon what part he needed to play he effortlessly switched roles. He was such a talented actor he could probably perform the whole play by himself, switching costumes, makeups and masks. One of those actors who completely disappeared into the role, to the point that you forgot they were an actor on stage, and only saw their character when you saw them.  
  
He thought that there was nothing to him at all, he was too warped to count as a person so he could keep going like this forever. Yet suddenly for the first time he had been reminded what other people’s faces look like. He stayed at a school for two months rather than transferring after a week. He saw them every day, Matsuda’s frustrated looks, and Ryoko’s smiles, and unlike his their smiles contained their genuine emotions. He wondered compared to those two, what his smile even looked like. A painted on smile. He had no idea at all.  
  
All of those masks had piled up in before his feet, but it was not like he was wearing them to conceal some true hidden self. It was more like, there was nothing at all behind them. Then, why was he bothering with so many masks? He had forgotten… why did he even start pretending in the ifrst place, and committing himself to play those roles? 『I could no longer tell which face I was wearing. Funny, don’t you think? I deceived others - and myself- for so long I eventually lost sight of my real self.. Don’t worry you can laugh, I’m laughing too.』  
  
It’s not that he did not care. It was not that he was unaware that people were getting hurt because of their actions. He just did not know, when he was supposed to be happy, when he was supposed to be sad, how a normal person would react to these situations and what was within the bounds of the right way to react.  
  
It amazed him that people just reacted to things without thinking how they were supposed to feel, what emotions they were supposed to display on their face. If he just kept smiling, maybe he could keep deceiving, and nobody would realize that even he had lost track of the lies.

『Yasuke-chan, I want to be your friend. I want you and Ryoko-chan to keep being happy, my cute little friends who I protect. I don’t really even care that I’m not a part of your happiness but I… I don’t know if these feelings are sincere or if I’m faking them.』

Kumagawa tilted his head to the side. Even though his face was covered in blood he did not seem to notice it. He probably only ever smiled like that, because it was the only expression he knew how to make. As Kumagawa dragged Yasuke up by the tie around his neck and held him against the wall he continued speaking having no idea whether he was understood or not, he did not even seem to understand what he himself was saying.

『All I know is… there was a girl I loved once, and a person like me had no qualms about ripping her face off. I felt nothing at all when I beat up Mukuro-chan back there. And right now, I’m about to kill the current you because he’s getting in my way, and reset you back to the old Yasuke-chan I first met. And when that happens, I probably won’t feel bad at all about just going on pretending like nothing happened.』

As Kumagawa smiled, tears dripped from both of his eyes uncontrollably but he did not even seem to notice them.

『It’s scary isn’t it. Not knowing who I am anymore, makes me so scared… that’s why I want to help you with Ryoko-chan, I don’t want… another person like me in the world.』

_I’m awful. I don’t particularly wnat to think about that. If I forget the person I care for and if they died… the thought is unbearable… So i’ll protect them. No matter what happens I’ll protect them._ _  
_

Matsuda’s own words echoed in his ear, as his skull shook like a freshly rung bell, and his ears ringing, his brain shaking, every part of him welled up with that emotion of utter revulsion. Fear for what he might become if he was separated from Junko.

『Don’t worry I’ll save you Yasuke-chan, if not this time then next time. Then again, then again, then again, you might forget about me, and Ryoko-chan might forget, and I might lie about who I am but it’s okay I won’t break my promise.』

“I don’t want to be saved by trash like you.” Rejection. Reject. Reject. Matsuda found strength in himself suddenly and he threw Kumagawa off of him and against a wall. “No one asked to be saved by you. No one even needs to be saved by someone like you.”

At that moment Yasuke threw himself was Kumagawa and the two of them fought seriously like they were going to kill each other. Even if they were the only ones who could understand each other in that moment, they both furiously rejected the sight in front of them.  
  
Just like how, you yourself are your only true ally in the world. Nobody else is going to understand you the way that you understand yourself. Even if they try they just won’t, it’s impossible, you are all that you have. Yet, even though you understand yourself, it’s very easy to hate yourself isn’t it? Even knowing all of what should be your sympathetic reasons, knowing the reasons behind your actions, it’s easier to hate yourself, to hate everything you do.

For some reason it’s easier to sympathize with others, and understand their actions when it’s not yourself. Probably becausei it’s not yourself.  
  
It’s a good thing we’re all fundamentally incapable of understanding one another really. If we did understand, we’d probably just hate each others guts as much as we hate our own guts.  
  
Kumagawa and Matsuda understood exactly what the other was feeling. Yet, all they wanted to do was destroy those external reminders, because they could not fix what was inside of them.

“Stop it! I just want to forget already! Let me forget just for a second! Stop reminding me every second of every day!”  
  
Matsuda threw Kumagawa to the ground in the present day. He picked him up by the collar again, and slammed his fist hard into his face. Maybe if he broke and bruised that face enough, Kumagawa would stop smiling at him.

『Quit blaming me! It’s not my fault, but you always… you just bottle things up and then explode and start hitting me. And I always just take it. And even if you calm down neither of us get any better because you just go back to bottling up again.』  
  
“It is your fault. You make me keep living. I have to keep looking, at how terrible I am constantly, and knowing it’s all my fault so I can’t even cry about it.”

『Yasuke-chan, I don’t think you’re terrible.』

  
“It’s like you wanted to laugh in my face, that even if I was given an infinite amount of retries I’d still mess things up just as bad. It wasn’t the situation that was wrong, it was just me, I was wrong. And never for a second, do you let me forget it.”

『Yasuke-chan, that’s not what I want.』  
  
“I know what you want. You just want to surround yourself with people who are just as miserable as you are, so you feel like less of a freak. But in that case, if you’re choosing to surround yourself with unstable people, you don’t get to bitch and moan when they break down and you get caught in the blast radius.”

『Yasuke-chan, I didn’t want you to turn out miserable! I would have been happy if Yasuke-chan ended up with Junko. Even if the situation was reversed right now, and Junko became a better person with Yasuke-chan and I was left behind I would still be happy.』  
Kumagawa yelled in his face, causing Yasuke’s fingers to hesitate when they were reaching for his neck.

『But can you say the same thing? If the situation were reversed would you really try so hard to protect me and unko at the same time, would you be struggling as much as I am right now?』  
  
“I already know I’m terrible.”

『Bullshit. You’re a good person, you’re just acting terribly! I tried to help you, I wanted to help you even after things turned out all wrong like this!』Kumagawa suddenly gained the strength to move again, and aimed a fist right into Yasuke’s stomach. He twisted the blow in a way that made it feel like Yasuke’s organs were being twisted around a screw. He coughed up blood, right onto Kumagawa who was in front of him. 『But all you’ve done was spit in my face.』

Kumagawa reached up and slowly wiped away the blood, but he only managed to smear it further. Things could not be washed away that easily. 『I said it’s all about Junko, but it’s not even about Junko is it? After all, she’s safe right now, she’s getting a little bit better if all you wanted was for her to be saved then shouldn’t you be happy about that? It’s just about you isn’t it?』

Sickening. He was so sick of himself. Even Kumagawa had become sick of him. Kumagawa suddenly threw Yasuke off of him, and Yasuke felt himself slam hard against the ground. 『I’m not just a punching bag Yasuke-chan, you know how it always goes, I keep enduring and enduring and then I hit back worse than they ever hit me.』  
  
He breathed down Yasuke’s neck.

『Hey, Yasuke-chan why do you even have a face of your own? All you need to be is Junko’s childhood friend right? That’s all you matter as, so why you do need this face?』  
  
Suddenly as Kumagawa raised his hand though, he heard a squeak behind him. A voice weaker than a mouse’s. Junko was standing there, but she looked exactly like Ryoko. Not only that it was Ryoko’s voice that came out not hers. “Bear River, don’t hurt Matsuda-kun. You promised.”  
  
Junko slapped her hands over her own mouth as if she did not intend to do that.

『You’re right, I’m sorry about that Ryoko-chan.』Kumagawa responded on reflex. Even then, suddenly, if it was for the sake of someone else he was able to stop himself.

 

😈

 

 

Junko had been watching the fight like an uninvolved bystander. As if neither of the boys fighting had anything to do with her. Her mouth widened into a smile without her even realizing it, and drool fell from the corners of her lips. It was like a needle of emotion had been shot into her heart to jumpstart her. She was not even concerned about the crash she had felt a moment ago, the disappointing lack of her own emotions.  
  
No, she just wanted to focus on the little pinpricks of what she could feel right now in this moment. Sure, climbing up so high meant she would inevitably fall back down again but the falls were what made life so fun.  
  
She really was terrible. Kumagawa was getting hurt for the second time in front of her eyes, but now that she was enjoying it she had no plans to interfere. She was not going to call out, or reach out, or do anything to stop it.  
  
That was probably the only difference between her and Medaka in the end, Medaka moved and she did not. She would just stand still and silent as an observer watching, trying to get her kicks that way. If she was enjoying it, she stopped caring about what happened to Kumagawa. Only when it went an unenjoyable way did she start to doubt herself again. To feel bad she could not do anything. But that was only because she was going to lose her connection to all of these fresh emotions.

She was… She was… Who was she again? Was any of that true? Did she want to be such a person? Suddenly a terrible pain shot through her head grasping at it. She felt a splintering headache, in a literal sense, like the two halves of her brain wanted to come apart.  
  
As she stumbled backwards she saw it. A girl watching her from the glass window but it was not just because her appearance had changed. No she got the distinct feeling it was Ryoko, watching her through the window. As if that cracked window was a broken portal to another world, one where Junko was just a normal, empty girl, who did not think of hope or despair at all.  
  
“Hey, hey, hey, why did Matsuda-kun pick you? Can you tell me why? If he wanted a nice normal girl he could have had me, or someone who depended on him forever.”  
  
“Is this kind of some split personality thing? If it’s both me and Toko-chan won’t we be overusing that trope.”  
  
This time the glass did not shatter and nobody stepped out from it. That girl just kept watching through the glass. “Dunno. It’s not like I understand this stuff, my head’s empty, but… I don’t think alters talk to each other.”

"Oh great then I invented a new kind of crazy. Thank you brain. You're too smart to even lose your mind normally." Junko wondered why she was splitting apart this time. Perhaps because she knew, if she was more of a normal girl and she saw Kumagawa and Matsuda fighting like this, she would want to say something, to stop them, to be involved, to move somehow. So her mind was creating it. She had gotten bored of her current unmoving self again and her mind changed just like that.  
  
THat was right at some point she existed as Ryoko, and yet she also was Junko at the same time. There was some small part of her that still existed that could take back control. When she was Ryoko, was that real herself just watching from the back of her mind, who experienced those memories…

That voice that rang out, was of myself.  
By the very end I remembered.  
I finally remembered everything.  
At the same time, everything crumbled apart.  
The scenery I perceived to be an immutable existence, easily, and then completely crumbled apart. It was like that sand castle. No matter how elaborate or stable it appeared to be, it easily crumbled apart like that sand castle. My entire body's skin, muscle, bones, all like dry sand crumbled apart, and I faded away.  
Everything crumbled away, and went back to normal.  
My world ended, and her world was created.  
That would be my, Ryouko Otonashi's, final moment.  
Then, everything finally returned back to normal.  
  
She remembered it crystal clear, Ryoko’s death and the moment she wrested control back again. Her brain overcame Matsuda’s lobotomizing because she simply wanted it to be so, so could the same happen again? For Junko to disappear again to the back of her head watching everything that passed by her while Ryoko retained control. Could it work that way? If… if it did end up like that would it really even be any different? She did not do a single thing anyway even when she puppeteered this thing called a body around.  
  
She saw Ryoko’s hands pounding over and over again against the glass, as if it was a cage keeping her contained. Yet the glass did not move at all, nor did it break, because she was not real.

Ryoko and Junko looked out at the same time, through the same eyes. The reason those boys were fighting, it was because of the red strings pulling them around. They had become so knotted around each other that they were both practically being strangled. Junko looked at her own hands and saw the strings connected to at least two of her fingers.  
  
Ryoko looked at her hands and saw that there was no connections at all. The people who happened to care about her, had only cared because she was Junko. Otherwise she was uninvolved, unrelated, in other words she had nothing to do with them.  
  
“I see. That’s why.” Ryoko said, even though she spoke with a voice of calm acceptance she brought her hands to her face like she wanted to cry. “It didn’t have to be you did it? It could have ended up differently. It could have been me. There was a chance, I know we dreamed about it, where I just fled to america and ended up with Matsuda-kun leaving everything else behind.”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“But it ended up being you, because you're the one whose connected to them. Still I hope he remembers me, that's selfish of someone who always forgets to ask but... what I felt at the time was real.”  
  
“This isn’t good enough. I’m not moving enough. I can’t live like this.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s why it has to be you. I was really happy just like that, if I had never been fixed, if I had kept living forgetting things forever I still would have been happy, but nothing’s ever good enough for you. You’d never be satisfied with a small world like that, unconnected.”

As Ryoko disappeared from her yes, like a small whisper of a goodbye her voice finally slipped out. Junko was so embarrassed she clapped her hands over her own mouth to shut herself up.  
  
Matsuda looked up from where he was on the ground and caught a glimpse of her. Just for a flash of a second, Junko’s features had shifted into something unmistakably Ryoko like. That was right, for a little while there was a foolish little girl named Ryoko that existed.

_Yes. She was always alone. She seemed lonely. But she would not stay put in my lab where it was safe, she was always wandering around, she never stopped searching for someone who would push through the cold darkness that lied in the gaps between her memories and reach out to her._

All of Junko’s ‘friends’ became nervous around her due to her condition. There was nobody who could talk to her without being awkward. They all seemed to feel too much pain at being forgotten. Then there was one boy who showed up out of nowhere, who always reintroduced himself to her no matter how many times he was forgotten, he took that with a smile and never let anything show on his face. Even Matsuda could not stop himself from being consumed by his painful thoughts of regret towards Junko, to the point where he showed it to Ryoko.

Ryoko was always dancing around so foolishly, on the surface of the water. As if nothing mattered to her at all, so carefree, so light hearted, sometimes he almost wanted to let it infect him. Yet, suddenly that oh so light girl, so light she could dance on the water, sunk far beneath the surface of the water. She plummeted down into the ocean where Yasuke could not see her and Yasuke did not even reach out fr her as she disappeared.

 _I didn’t do anything to help you. Even though I was the one responsible for your existence. I could have told Kumagawa everything, and asked him to help me run away with you from this school. But I decided against it. I chose Junko over you and didn’t care what you felt about it at all, and even then in the end I tried to stop Kumagawa who wanted to stop Junko, and I tried to stop Junko as well._ _  
_ _  
_ _Contradictory behavior._ _  
_ _I keep contradicting myself._ _  
_ _Because I think I’m choosing other people, but I’m only choosing myself._ _  
_ _What did you think of me, Ryoko-chan?_ _  
_ _I should have listened to you. Your feelings. Even if they were going to disappear soon._ _  
_ _Even if they were full of nothing but hatred for me._ _  
_ _I should have._ _  
_ _Listened to them._

“All I wanted was to save you.”  
The words fell out of his lips without him meaning to.    
He did not care about anything else. He could live without a mother or a father, so why was it too much to ask for love from this one person? Even if the rest of the world despised him, as long as he had her he was sure he could endure it.  
But he didn’t have her.  
  
He saw in his mind’s eye for a moment what might have happened if he chose to dive after Ryoko. He jumped into the water and swam with everything he could, pushing himself further and further down.  
  
Yet the harder he chased after her, the faster Ryoko seemed to disappear. In trying to swim after her, all he saw was the face she made as she disappeared out of his sight. The face of looking at somebody who was not good enough to save her. That was all trying would bring him. That was all his acknowledgement would make him face.  
  
Then, the sadness disappeared because he did not want to be sad anymore. If facing things would only hurt him, then he would just not face them. He easily kicked Kumagawa off of him and pushed him down the hallway.  As he tackled Kumagawa the two of them continued to roll.  
  
He saw Kumagawa change, get younger, his high school self, his middle school self, even further.  
  
“It’s your fault. If only you weren’t here, I wouldn’t be hurting so much.”

As he raised his hand though looking back at him was not Kumagawa, the pitch black Kumagwa he knew but rather nothing more than a white haired child. A child with white hair, and blue eyes, that flinched away and trembled like the entire world was pain.  
  
ANd Matsuda remembered, the alternating cycles that wavered back and forth with his mother’s illness. She would forget who she was and raised a hand against him. He would have to do his homework all alone with his face bandaged up, hoping the mark would not show so he would not have to explain it to the others at school. Then afterwards when she remembered his mother would hug him and cry, not believing she was capable of such a terrible thing. She apologized over and over again.  
  
However, Matsuda could not feel like he was a part of those moments, because it felt like if he closed his yes when he oened them again he would be sprawled out on the tatami mats, rolling up to cover his head so he would not get hurt too bad as his mother raised a hand and screamed in his face, asking again and again why somebody else’s child had shown up to torment her.  
  
He was an eyesore.  
He was not even hers.  
Parents could not pick their children.  
Those words, did that mean if given the choice even his own mother would not choose him?  
Then afterwards when he closed his eyes again, he would open them to find his mother wrapped around him, comforting him, not remembering who had left those bruises on him in the first place.  
  
His mother held his hand when it was andaged up, and soothed him. Even though she was the one responsible for those bandages.  
  
Even after enduring all of that. The cycles of remembering and forgetting, after being strong for her sake because all of the adults around him told him too. Nothing came from it. He did not matter a single thing to her in the end, and nothing he did to try to help ease her sickness mattered.  
  
Because one day when he came home from school, his mother’s feet were not touching the floor. It was not even the sickness that had killed her in the end, she simply chose to leave.  
  
And in that moment when he was completely alone, when he thought there was nobody else for him because he did not have a family anymore, another girl reached out and held his hand just like his mother did. She chose to be by his side.

Even if he wanted to punch himself in the face now. There was no way he could bring himself to hit that crying kid, that used to be beaten for begging his mother to go back to acting like a mother again.  
  
“Shit… you’re just a brat aren’t you? Me, Junko and you, we’re all brats.”

『Y-yasuke-chan, I’m sorry. It’s probably my fault. The truth is, you are a more complete person than either Junko or me will ever be. You probably will be able to move on from us eventually, but I can’t say the same thing about myself… I won’t stop being empty or stop being like this. I’m sorry, I love you and Junko-chan so much… but forcing you to be around us is probably just, dragging you down to our level.』

“No… it’s not… it’s not like you have nothing to do with us anymore. Maybe it was like that at first, but you’ve been with us for so long now, it’s impossible to say it has nothing to do with you.”

That was right nobody was there to comfort that crying child. His mother did not at like a mother. He was all alone and it was the worst.  
  
Even if Junko had been a sweet and normal childhood friend. No, even if she had been a saint like Medaka, that would not make what had happened with his mother go away.  
  
They were two distinct people, he could not replace one with the other hoping it would fill up what was empty inside of him. He was jealous, he was unbeliavably jealous because Kumagawa had been such a faceless person in front of him, so lost, and then when he found Junko he started to find himself again.  
  
If Matsuda kept trying to comfort that crying child forever though, he was going to remain that child forever. Even if he could not be complete, even if he could never be complete, he still could move a little bit forward. It was better than living forever in the same moment again and again.  
  
Besides, his precious memories with Junko were his. He wanted to be more than Junko’s puppet, Junko’s childhood friend. It was not a manipulation, his emotions did not mean nothing.  
He had really fallen for her. He really did love her. That weirdo and her weird messed up brain, even when she walked around the room talking nonsense, he was in love with that nonsense.  
Matsuda stopped pushing that child against the ground. He loosened his grip, and clumsily stood up once more. However his legs would not sustain his weight, and he fell to his knees right in front of Kumagawa. The white haired Kumagawa who wore a pure white hospital uniform. “Sorry. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. We’re horrible aren’t we? Junko and I…we dragged you into this.”

『It’s okay. You protected Junko so many times. The fact that Junko has any redeemable parts at all, it’s probably because of you. The fact that she feels love, is all due to you.』  
  
Matsuda tried to reach out, but his hands only trailed across Kumagawa’s front, dragging at the cloth he was wearing. He felt afraid to touch him. Afraid to ruin the pure white innocence of a child the same way he had been ruined.

『Yasuke-chan, don’t look away. Don’t throw yourself away. You think you’re getting rid of the bad parts, but you’ll be throwing out the good parts too. If you hate me, that’s okay I guess, but I don’t want you to use me to hate on the person I love. Hey, hey, I’m not mad at you, you’ve done so much so far, you tried your best, even if you failed it wasn’t pointless, I understood your feelings at the time. Thank you for everything.』  
  
That feeling.  
That empty feeling it was loss.  
It only hurt him but at the same time it was something he could not look away from.  
  
Yasuke looked up suddenly and grabbed the sides of Kumagawa’s face. “What the hell are you doing sounding like a sad sack trying to comfort me…?” He pulled Kumagawa’s fat childish cheeks into a smile. Even though as a middle schooler right now he was not much older. “You’ve gotta smile, smile, you won’t be Kumagawa if you don’t smile. Don’t lose sight of yourself either. Come on, cheer up, kids should laugh.”

『...』  
  
“You’re always such a fun guy to be around, Kumagawa.”

『...』  
  
“Maybe we won’t be able to last forever like this, maybe this isn’t stable or healthy but… let’s try to have fun in the meantime. You’re just a brat that only cares about having fun after all.”

『: D』

  
Matsuda finally let go and stood up on his own again. He offered Kumagawa a hand up. “Sorry for being such a pain, and making you put up with me.”

『It’s fine Yasuke-chan, besides I need you.』Kumagawa smiled as he took his hand and walking back down the hallway he grew up just a little more again into his middle school self. As she did he gave Yasuke a smile.  
  
It was so calm and pleasant, that it made him even more uneasy. Kumagawa was just not Kumagawa unless his smile was twisted and a little bit creepy. It was odd to see him so calm. “If I disappear suddenly, I’ll still need you to watch over Junko. So don’t go around saying you’re unneeded.”

Matsuda let go of Kumagawa’s hand and then grabbed onto Junko’s as she stood there, still as always, watching like a doll that had been thrown into the corner of the room. “Listen. I’m not going to regret meeting you anymore. I’m not going to believe it was all pointless, just because it all ended in despair, so I hope that pisss you off.”

Yasuke said, as sharp tongued as always. “Thanks for finding me that day, thank you for choosing me.”  
  
Thank you.  
He really thanked her for such a stupid thing.  
Even though she had just been manipulating him all along.  
  
Yasuke seemed to know more about her feelings than she herself did for the moment. THen suddenly as Kumagawa was walking ahead of them, the floor disappeared underneath them.  
  
Junko moved faster than Yasuke did, perhaps because she had gotten so tired of standing in this one place. She rushed forward and grabbed Kumagawa with her one hand before he could disappear and fall away. However she had zero upper body strength, she was too fragile to hold any weight at all and she immediately fell forward dragged down by him.   
  
“Misogi!”

“You idiots!”  
  
Yasuke said, and suddenly he grabbed onto both of them. If he just let go of one, he would probably very easily be able to pull up the other, but even though he had thought this whole time if it came down to it he would easily sacrifice Kumagawa for Junko… he suddenly hesitated.  
  
Both.  
He wanted to save both, to protect them.  
Because they were both stupid brats.

With the last of the strength he had, he pulled them both up and threw them back onto the hospital floor. His legs collapsed and he fell forward into the trap door. He could not even see the face Junko made as she watched him plummet. He wondered, was it just going to be more despair on her face again or something else?  
  
And so Yasuke Matsuda, the idiot who never learns, fell again trying to protect someone else.


	30. I Hate Liars and I Hate Lies

Two years before the story began.  
  
In Medaka’s final year of middle school, and when the 77th class was reaching the end of their first year of hope’s peak. When the Kamukura Project and the Flask Plan at the same time were getting into their full swings.  
  
The flask plan which was conducted by Sandbox academy apparently had its originator in a fakey fake person like Ajimu Najimi, but in the present day it was lead first by Kurokami Maguro and then Kurokami Kujira. It was manipulated on the side by Shiranui Hansode’s grandfather and because of that it was inexorably connected to the Kurokami’s. That plan devoured abnormalities in order to perfect Medaka at its center and push her closer and closer to perfection.  
  
At the same time there was the Kamukura project, whose main subject was not an unbelievably talented girl but rather an empty boy from the reserve course who could easily be replaced by anyone else in humanity. Even though it was a purely scientific project unlike the partially supernatural based Flask Plan, the normal, not particularly talented scientists behind it believed that they were human beings who were bringing all talent together to craft a god.

It’s by coincidence that these two projects ran at the same time, and ocused on two such similiar subjects, Kamukura Izuru and Kurokami Medaka. Or was it? By design, there was one man who had a hand in both projects. Years before when the flask plan was in its roots and Kurokami Medaka was observed at Sandbox General Hospital the Hospital Director was Matsuda Furkuou. Maiden name Tsurubami Fukurou, who changed his name after marrying into seventh branch family of the Kurokamis. It was a marriage that gave him wealth, connections, a friendship with the head of the family Kajiki, as well as a son who was just as talented, even moreso with his chosen field of medicine.  
  
However, before Medaka had even entered middle school Fukurou detached himself from the flask plan, and instead took part of the research he had stolen from that project to Hope’s Peak. There he became head of the Kamukura project, and laid the groundwork for the procedures that would be done on Izuru Kamukura. He even went out of his way to try to manipulate Kamukura into sharing his same elitist thoughts on the nature of talent, calling him a teacher and insisting Kamukura be taught rather than leaving him a blank slate. However his plans there were never complete.  
  
Perhaps he meant to take research from the Kamukura project as well combining it with what he had observed in the flask plan into some project of his own ulterior motives. He never got the chance, he died, and he was succeeded by his son as the head of the project. However, he did not die when Kamukura slaughtered the rest of the scientists he considered his teachers to relieve his boredom. It was not Kamukura who killed him, but rather he died at random, over a personal grudge. All his carefully laid plans went to waste just like that, like throwing a rock through an elegantly woven spider web, or did they?

Three years ago, Deishuu Kaiki visited an acquaintance from college who was currently living with the daughter of Tsurubami Hato.  
  
In college there had been two clubs, that were like inseparable rivals from one another. The occult research club, and the scientific research club. The ebers of the occult included Izuko, Kaiki, Oshino, Kagenui and Jin who later cut ties with them. Whereas the scientific research club was made up of Hato, her older brother Fukurou, Kajiki, and Togami. Some within the supernatural club even believed that Izuko the baby of the family had only chosen to become obsessed with the supernatural as opposed to her two science loving siblings who were prodigies in the medical field as a form of rebellion against her sister who had always been too harsh on her.  
  
Kaiki would have had no connection with the man Fukurou, especially since Izuko who he at least respected as a senpai did not care for him at all despite being the middle sibling of the family and her older brother. Except both him and Fukurou had a tie to Tsurubami Hato. Kaiki had loved her for the majority of his life, with her being like a mentor to him even though the two of them never got the chance to get together as something always stood in the way. Even when she was single, Kaiki himself had a girlfriend at the time. Whereas Hato was Fukurou’s older sister. After their parents abandoned the three siblings she took the responsibility of raising them. Even when his sister was too harsh on Izuko, Fukurou never once stepped in to defend her. He admired his sister’s way of thinking, he thought his sister was always right. His sister who took the time to raise her two younger siblings, and take care of everyone else around her.  
  
She was the only one he had ever seen as a human being. Even though he was planning on living the rest of his life unattached, he always would at least have the connection to his sister to ground him.  
  
They loved the same woman, albeit in different ways. One like family, and one like a lover. They both admired that woman as the ideal. That was why when Fukurou invited him and said that it was about Hato-nee, then Kaiki accepted even though he could not stand Fukurou personally.  
  
At the time there was another thing waiting in the back of his mind. The promise he had made to Hato once on her deathbed, the emotional blackmail, that if her daughter was ever in trouble that he would come and help her. Kaiki had ignored such a request so far, because Hato had not paid him and he thought it was foolish to do work for free.

“I’m really glad you came to meet me, Kaiki-kun. Only a petty villain like you could really understand me. I need to advise my plans a little bit, because that girl discovered thm. She’s held back by pesky morals just like Hato-nee was, and went and tattled on me.”  
  
Kaiki looked at the files which had been spread out on the table. Photoes of children in surgery. The records of the Flask Plan, and then Kurokami project. It went over the head of a simple conman. “All of this for what…?”

“Come on you have to know already, why I would call you of all people. A devil like you should know that the best thing to tempt others with is what they desire to see the most.”  
  
Kaiki tilted his head, the horns his black hair pulled back and shaped into two horns.  
  
“What you and I desire to see the most. The person we desire to see again.”  
  
“Hato is dead. There are ways to cheat death, but it’s impossible to bring them back "  
  
“Gosh, you supernatural specialists are always so hokey. What did you think I was going to sew together her dead body parts and then use lightning to bring back her heart? No, all we need to do is replace her.” Fukurou wandered back to his desk, putting his hands on the files as he pulled out a disc.

  
“You…” Kaiki was nothing more than a petty villain and a crook. He had stolen away more than this without batting an eye. Yet, in this instant he pieced together what Fukurou had been telling him, and realized that before his eyes Hato’s own daughter was going to be stolen away. “What.. the hell is wrong with you? You claim you love Hato, and then you’re going to destroy the daughter she left behind? You left your son who you should have been loving in order to do something stupid like that?"  
  
“Here I thought you’d be all on board for my second Hato-nee plan."  
  
“Is everyone just a replacement fo your sister to you? There’s no insurance, why can't you understand this?"  
  
“Hey, hey, you’re a loud one aren’t you? Is that something soeone who loves fakes like you should be saying? And if you really want to say that, go tell it to our society. Try and think about it. Right now isn’t this world filled with things that “seem authentic”. The “Amazing Atmosphere” of something is given more importance than the “Amazing something” in itself. This is a world where people who are good at pretending to be geniuses are valued better than actual geniuses. You hear people grumbling “It looks like fun” more than saying “this is fun.” This age demands, synthetic dyeing. What’s wrong with it? I like fakes, cheap articles, and inferior goods. You can handle them  without too much are if they break, you feel no regret if you lose them, it’s still fine, and above all else if you get tired of them you can just throw them away.”

“...”  
  
“What’s with that look, Kaiki-kun? You love money for the same reason don’t you? Because you can spend it and throw it away easily without getting attached. You even threw away those two boys you were mentoring, so what right do you have to criticize me?”

“...”  
  
“Actually, you’re even colder than I am. At least I was able to miss my sister, I loved her enough to want to bring her back from the dead. I’m giving you the opportunity to bring back the love of your life and you don’t even give a damn. What a cold bastard.”  
  
“I do love fakes.” Kaiki finally spoke up, facing the man who was lounging in his chair. “What I love about fakes are they have to make the effort to become real. You're just clinging without trying.”  
  
“Haha, why did I even invite you? There was no way I could have ever out talked you, Kaiki-kun. You’ve always been more silver tongued then I was. I’m just no good with people. Well that’s fine, even if you don’t help me I have lots, and lots of insurance. For example, fourteen years ago I threw out your little Kumagawa from my hospital so he wouldn’t get the help he needed, and then on the same day I made sure Medaka-chan would meet a wonderful childhood friend, I’ve been thinking of this for a long time so even if you don’t help me here it won’t matter. It was I who-”

Just as he was getting into the full swing of his mastermind speech however, Kaiki who had barely been able to contain himself before this snapped. There was a reason he true sentiments, it’s because liars always seemed much easier to control. People say that lies eventually snowballed, but that was only when they were sloppy and careless liars.  
  
However at the moment Kaiki’s true emotions surfaced. The affection he had for Hato came up to the surface, and the promise he had made on her deathbed. Emotional blackmail was indeed a powerful thing.  
  
“You’re an uncle grooming his niece. There are plenty of people like you in the world, there’s nothing special about your plans…” Kaiki said in a soft voice.  Before he knew it, he placed both of his hands around ‘that thing’s neck. Kaiki gathered all his power into his hands and squezed, untilthat thing stopped talking. He had just wanted to shut him up. Kaiki was leaning forward, his hair falling in front of his eyes. However he didn’t loosen his grip. Instead he tightened it, he put all his power into his hands.  
  
Quickly, the hospital chair’s shaking subsided. The feeling of what his hands were wrapped around disappeared. The feeling of ‘that thing’ ended. “There are plenty of people like you in the world, that’s why the world can do without you. It’s nothing personal, I just hate liars like you.”

After awhile, Kaiki finally opened his eyes again. All the muscles in his body felt exhausted and tense, he really was getting old. Sweat dripped from his forehead, he dragged his hands through his hair but all he managed to do was mess up the careful styling of his hair.  
  
“So that’s what killing a person feels like.” He walked forward with careful methodical steps as he feared he might fall over otherwise. His hand reached out and dug through the pockets of the man until he pulled out a wallet from his labcoat. “Carry more money on you next time you’re killed. I can’t believed I just killed you for free, I hate doing things for free.”

He made the mistake of lingering for too long though. Suddenly, there was a girl waiting in the doorway. He had no idea how much she had seen, but Kaiki knew this girl could never know the truth.  
  
“He killed himself.”  
  
Kaiki said, before Medaka even got the chance.  
  
“He knew that you had discovered his research, but his heart was so changed from his time spent with you, that he killed himself in order to atone. You made him into a better person.”  
  
“Then, I killed him?”

Kaiki thought it was better for her to believe that she had killed him rather than carry the trauma of what her uncle was going to do to her for the rest of her life. “Yeah, you were too strong for him.” It was better to be strong than to be weak, right? “If that’s what you believe, then sure. You kids shouldn’t listen to adults too much anyways, adults barely know what they’re doing either.”

So, the many dominoes that Fukurou had set up all kept standing up without ever being pushed over. He was killed that moment two years ago, by Kaiki’s impulse alone. Not only that, but the years of precious research he had collected from hopping off to several projects.  
  
Kaiki wanted to make a quick buck after being forced to bloody his hands. He dialed up on the phone and called an old business partner of his. “Hello, Shiranui? I have some research you might be interested in. I’ll give you it at a discount since it’s stolen goods. What? Shady? Me? I would never.”  
  
That was how Fukurou lived his life. He replaced, and replaced, and then replaced the replacement.

He developed styles, and thereore should have known their weakpoint better than anyone. That they did not work on frenzied or angered people, people who were impossible to communicate with. He had measures intended in case someone tried to kill him, and yet he did not understand that Kaiki might snap and try to kill him in that moment and did not even fight back.  
  
He didn’t understand that kind of stuff. Like, if he threatened the daughter of the woman he loved, Kaiki would be enraged. He did not believe it was possible Kaiki would come to see Medaka as her own person. He thought Kaiki would live exactly the same way he did. If something wouldn’t go his way, he would face away and immediately start searching for something else, a fake, a cheap, an inferior product. Up until now, that person lived only by making compromises, therefore he.  
  
He never once felt anger, so he couldn’t understand the feelings of one who was angry. Even as Kaiki enclosed his hands around his neck, he just kept talking. Styles are abilities based on communication meant to fight on par with personal skills, and those very styles allow one to empathically cry, shiver and feel with others, just like sharing a story with them.  
  
Yet their creator, professor Matsuda Fukurou was the one who above all else, couldn’t grasp people’s feelings. That was how he lived, and that was how he died.

 

😈

 

A few hours before the main cast reached the ruins of Sandbox Hospital, the villains arrived first. As villains are ought to do, it’s always the antagonist who strikes first and the villain who responds.

Shiranui Hansode walked at the head of the group, with Iihiko and Nisenoshima trailing behind her. Actually, even an imitation Junko would never walk all the way up a mountain. She was being carried in a palanquin, with Iihiko in the front and another of her masked despairs carrying in the back. “We’re going to go see a dead person, huh? Is this what you wanted to show me?” Shiranui said from the head of the group.  
  
As they arrived at the foot of the hospital,the fake Junko stretched out and yawned. “Wait a second I’m not ready for my entrance yet! Iihiko! We’re here so escort me out of this thing, and you short stuff go and fan me.”

“I’m not even the shortest person here come on, Shiranui is way shorter than me.” The masked boy whined as he dropped his end of the palanquin. He picked up a fan that was about half is size and started to fan her, hoping that the gust of wind would be so large it might knock the wig off of that girl’s head.  
  
Iihiko practically dove in front of her as she stepped off. While he was on his elbows and knees, she stepped on his back, and then onto the ground.  He looked pleased to have just saved her the effort of that half step. A terrible habit of his, spoiling his princess.  
  
Shiranui sighed at the pomp and circumstance, and looked at the decrepit hospital in front of her. “The ruins of the old sandbox hospital. It sure looks like the aftermath of a battle. It once was the frontline base of the flask plan, the place where Kurokami Medaka and HItoyoshi Zenkcihi met, ‘the place where it all began’ is a very fitting name.”  
  
At that Fake Junko suddenly jumped in. “So don’t you think this a perfect parallel to have our ending scene? That’s what we call book ending it, or chiastic story structure if you want to get all fancy.” Fake Junko jumped forward ahead of Shiranui, spinning around in excitement as if she were dancing.  
  
“You still like stories that much, huh?” Shiranui said, watching her wondering where all that energy came from. The days she energetically danced around like that seemed a thousand years away.  
  
“It was my dream to become an author! Now I get to spend all my time murdering my original characters do not steal and making them suffer, isn’t that just like any real author worth her stuff?” As she said that the fake Junko hugged herself in excitement. “I love all of my characters so much, that’s why I have to torture them. Well, not all of them, my first few like Iihiko were a failure.”  
  
“Princess…” Iihiko frowned, he seemed to be doing it with his whole face even though only half of it was visible with his mask.  
  
“Nobody wants an uber powerful mary sue character like you! God, why do you even exist? Oh, right, mad science and I made you.” Flippantly, fake Junko waved her hand through the air. “After all this time I came to a crucial revelation.”  
  
“What was that?”  
  
“You have no personality.”  
  
Certainly one way ot put it. That brutal dig would be enough to put most people in a funk, and Iihiko who had had his original personality removed and scooped out of his brain at Fake Junko’s request was no exception. He grimaced further and stopped moving entirely. He wondered if there was anybody in this world as audacious as her, to taunt him about that.  
  
“I-I don’t?”

“In my first draft, even Kumagawa of all people stands as a more compelling character than you. I attempted several revisions, but it was useless. Try as I might there’s no fixing you, when I read over my final draft you just struck me as one of those characters whose only meant to die to prove the strength of someone else.”  
  
“Whoa, Miss Princess. Wait a second.” He was so flustered he added the formality. “Personality is not how you win. Even if Kumagawa were more popular, if we were to fight he would definitely lose. Besides it was because of him all your plans were thrown into disarray in the first place.”  
  
“Sure, I don’t want you losing battles. But I can’t have you losing any popularity contests either. Let’s just say - you aren’t florid enough.”  
  
“Have some consideration!”

Apparently for a man whose brain had been rewritten by mad science, mary sue, and no personality, and the casual bringing up of his past trauma as a defect against him all of these wee far less scathing than the accusation of being insufficiently florid.  
  
“It’s not like you can start acting as cool and eccentric of any of my other favorite characters overnight, especially since all traces of your former perosnality have been erased. Who did that again? Haha whoops it was me, my bad. But Iihiko, I need you to at least put in an effort.”  
  
“E-effort.”  
  
“Tireless effort is character building. It takes a lot of trauma you know, to make a character as unique and compelling as Kumagawa Misogi. I don’t want my work of fiction to put the audience asleep, what if they get tired and give up reading halfway through? Then all of those people we murdered to raise the stakes and make this a more compelling story will have died for nothing.”

“...I’m sorry princess, I don’t understand your new interests as well as you do.”  
  
“Clueless as you are, it’s my responsibility to, as your author, to take care of you. That’s why, I’ll make sure to give you a proper catchphrase to spice things up at least.”  
  
“A catchphrase. I already have one. ‘What will you say as you die?” For an assassin it’s-”  
  
“Ugh you sound like you’re an idiot whose only good at killing. You’re not supposed to be the Mukuro foil don’t stomp all over these carefully set up plans like that.”  
  
“O-okay.”  
  
Rejected.  
His sole claim to personality totally rejected.  
  
“I don’t understand your obsession with death anyway. Could it be because your original personality died and now you’re nothing more than a frankenstein’s monster? Well whatever that’s lame. Well, I guess there’s no helping guys like you, Kumagawa has three super cool catchphrases so when you lose to him in popularity don’t come crying to me.”  
  
“Princess, I won’t lose. I’ll bring your plans to fruition, because that’s what I promised.” As he put his hand on his heart, solemnly making that oath, everybody else around him looked completely unimpressed.  
  
“There’s no point in a manzai routine amongst a bunch of actors.” Shiranui complained, and looked ahead to the hospital with impatience clear in her eyes.  
  
“Come on you can joke around with us. We’re friends after all.” Junko made her way back to Shiranui’s side, and threw an arm around her shoulder. “Let Shiranui have her exposition moment she worked, oh so hard on her research. Stop creating pointless distractions, going off on tangents, and being so loud Iihiko!”

“...Me?”  
  
“You know what you did!” Junko snapped back at him.”Still, your next job in that village was hired out by that man Fukurou even though he was already dead. Being hired by a dead person like this, in an abandoned hospital? The mad scientist vibes are off the chart, it just seems too cliche to be true.”  
  
Shiranui sighed as they finally walked into the ruins of the hospital. Her and Junko at the front, Iihiko in the middle, and a snickering boy in a mask at the back. “He’ll be here. The Matsuda family is a household of doctors in the first place, and aside from that this place is related to Fukurou the most. He was the director of this hospital and his oldest sister Tsurubami Hato worked here as a nurse.”  
  
“Tsurubami Hato, she’s Kurokami medaka’s mother, right? Am I getting my lore right here?” Junko continued to pester Shiranui, tapping on the side of her face with her nail.  
  
“Hey, hey, this is stuff related to the Kiurokami Family, you didn’t study that well, did you?” Shiranui said turning a hrash gaze back on the other girl.  
  
“Well I’m way more into the dangan ronpa lore. It’s all so cool, the Medaka Box lore is kind of nonsense. I’m working really really hard to patch it both together so we all have a place.”  
  
“Well, I think it’s understandable. Professor Fukurou made a mess out of the Jet Black Wedding feast, so Kurokami Medaka would have no suitors and abandoned his wife to die so there’s almost no record of the Matsuda family left.”  
  
“Geez, if he was such a person, I wonder what kind of woman Tsurubami Hato was.”  
  
“She was dead by the time I was born, so I can’t say for sure. But according to the testimony of people who knew her she was… ‘The White-Gowned Devil’ it’s a harsh nickname but it seems that she liked to walk around in her nurse uniform. She was a workaholic, no a devil for work. She treated her job like she was a nurse on the battlefield, working day and night without sleeping for more than 100 hours. Devoted is not nearly enough to describe her, she basically destroyed herself. Since she didn’t have any free time to spare, she donated all her money to fund medical research. Even when she was bearing her child, she didn’t take a maternity leave, they say she worked up until the day she delivered.”  
  
Shiranui continued to talk as they climbed up a flgiht of stairs.  
  
“Well, I guess she was already in a hospital after all. How convenient.” Iihiko commented as he trailed behind the group, not really geeting it.  
  
“At any rate, she died from a heart attack right after giving birth. It was nothing special, or dramatic, just death from overwork.”  
  
“How easily avoidable. If she thought about her daughter at all she could have been there for her, this is soooo thematic-”  
  
“Yes, we get it already Junko.” Shiranui sighed, in all fairness she had to listen to the Fake Junko harp on about this the whole ride there. “Those kind of superhuman legends have their darkness to. She demnaded the same level of dedication from her fellow coworkers. She maltreated her subordinates like slaves and nagged them to exhaustion. She wasn’t nice with her patients either, one of them even escaped from the hospital because of her obstinate harsh rehabilitation methods. It seems that when she heard about it she just said ‘I’m surprised he could walk on his own’. She had a habit of treating those who were sick, as simply not trying hard enough to get better, or faking it. Then there were her two siblings she raised on her own, Fukurou obsessed over her, and Izuko the youngest her hashness was too much and she drove her away.”  
  
“Ah wait. So, then Masuda-kun is Medaka-chan’s cousin rather than an adoptive brother. God, this family tree is getting too complicated with the branch families and what not.” The Fake Junko snapped her fingers as if just now coming up with the idea. “I know why don’t we kill them all. It won’t matter whose related to who when they’re dead god can sort them out. It’ll streamline things.”  
  
“You need to stop falling back on that. If that’s your inner Junko talking I recommend you repress that….” Shiranui said placing her hand on the wall to navigate. “By the way when she became a nurse, she read something called the “Nightingale’s vow’ contrary to our common view, the nightingale is a violent and relentless bird too. Well if people like her didn’t exist, the world wouldn’t change, and people wouldn’t be saved right? I guess she was the same as Medaka-chan in that respect.”  
  
“Ooh, bird symbolism.” Fake Junko cooed in the background.  
  
“Are you even listening to me? Your attention span is getting shorter and shorter.”  
  
“Sorry, sorry, but that was a good talk! Looks like we’re here, fourth ward, fourth floor, the director’s room. Ooh, four that’s symbolic for death-”  
  
“Stop that.” Shiranui interrupted.  
  
“It was pretty annoying coming here since the elevator’s broken but, let’s go see what your next job was going to be. I want to show you, why we went to such extreme measures to save you Sode-chan. I think after this you’ll understand.”

However before Shiranui could even reach the door, Fake Junko struck a pose holding her hand out. “Stop! I’ll go first. I’m going to attempt diplomacy. If I don’t come out in an hour, assume diplomacy’s failed and then come out after me. Iihiko make yourself scarce, we don’t want to bore the enemies to death. Faceless minion A you’re coming with me.”

It was suspicious but then, every single thing she did was suspicious. Shiranui had gone past being horrified at her actions, she was more tired at this point. Yet, she still had the patience of waiting for her.  
  
She waited a whole hour, before walking in all on her own. By that time she heard a lullaby playing over the speakers. That was just about the time that Medaka entered the hospital as well. Which means we too have caught up to the present.  
  
When Shiranui walked into the room, she saw Matsuda Fukurou in the flesh. He sat in his desk as always, and turned his chair around, a classic villain move. He must have been waiting the entire hour to do that. “You’ve finally come, Sode-chan. I’ve been waiting for you so long that I almost fainted from the boredom of waiting. I am Matsuda Fukurou. I welcome you, from the bottom of my heart.”

  
Next to him sitting tied up on his desk was NisEnoshima Junko. The minion A she had brought in with was on the floor, the great cape he was wearing thrown over his body with a pool of blood underneath it, probably to censor what was left of his body after being crushed.  
  
“Oh my, oh my, you’re quite the dandy, huh? And look a little too alive to be dead.”

 

😈

 

 

As the plot had caught up to the current moment that meant my dumb ass that was always falling head first into things, falling into love, falling into conspiracies to destroy schools, falling into trap doors. I fell flat on my face in between Shiranui Hansode and Matsuda Fukurou.  
  
Yet those two just kept on talking without even noticing I was there. How rude of them really. After they went so far to build this labyrnthine kafka-esque or perhaps more accurately scooby doo-esque hospital in the first place and then drop me down a trap door at random.  
  
“How the hell did I fall from the first floor to the fourth floor this building makes no sense.”

“Don’t be so surprised. Professor Fukurou invented styles after all, it’s only natural he could use them.” Shiranui said, looking at Matsuda who was flattened on the ground in front of her.  
  
“Oh? I see you know that I’m the creator of styles. You sure did your homework, Sode-chan.”  Excited, he lounged back in his chair crossing his legs.  
  
“Matsuda Fukurou. Former head of the Matsuda Family branch of the Kurokami by marriage, close friend of the family head. Uncle of Kurokami medaka that she loves as another father. Former director of Sandbox Hospital. Former head of the Kamukura Project. Dead man who was murderered three years ago, considers himself a string puller.” Shiranui assessed.  
  
Her assessments only a brought a smile to the man’s face. “Good! That’s very accurate! Are you by any chance a fan of mine?

“I’m not your fan, it’s my job.”  
  
“Sounds like you had it rough.” That man pushed himself out of his chair and then walked along stepping over Matsuda not even noticing him on the ground. “You get full marks. Here’s your reward, eat it as you wish. It’s your favorite candy.”

He pulled a lollipop out of his pocket and held it in front of her face. When Shiranui hesitated he only stared on in confusion.  
  
“What’s the problem? Why won’t you eat it? It’s candy from your favorite maker, bought from your favorite store, you know? I have your favorite meat, your favorite vegetables, your favorite fish. I ordered them all from the shops you usually visit.”  
  
Shiranui staggered back in shock. “Why did you… research me instead?”  
  
“Well, I never intended to hire you. That was just an excuse to invite you here. Why you ask, what a foolish question. Isn’t that obvious? Sode-chan, I invited you here… to make a marriage proposal.” At that moment out of nowhere and unnaturally that man got down on one knee, and pulled a ring from the pocket of his labocat, holding it in front of her face. “Please, accept this ring.”  
  
“...” Shiranui could not scream so she only gave a silent stare.  
  
“I’m unemployed, in my forties, a mad scientist, a shut-in, a dead man, a murderer, but I’ll definitely make you happy. Let’s marry!”

Instinctively, Shiranui backed away covering up her own body by crossing her arms over it as she did. Even though her body had been nothing more than a commodity she sold on the job all her life she could not contain her revulsion.  
  
On the floor Matsuda had enough of being ignored. He was annoyingly self important like that. “Umm, what the hell is going on? Don’t perform such a fucked up scene in front of me and treat me like I’m not here, especially after dropping me down a fucking trap door!”  
  
“Oi, oi, hey! Why are you speaking to me in such a familiar way? Do you know me? Are you a fan of mine, too? I feel like we can’t avoid having some fanservice now.” Forgetting the face of his own son, Furkurou continued to babble on about whatever it was he felt like at the moment not even noticing the mood of his audience. “Now, listen to my story. My sister Tsurubami Hato took care of me and our younger sister when our parents left, she was wise, solemn, smart, devoted, she had a strong sense of justice, she was courageous, and zealous. That girl was the embodiment of every ideal. But as accordingly, she also hated everything that wasn’t ideal such as self interest, dishonesty, deception, failure, foolishness and cruelty. She obstinately hated and rejected natural human weakness.”

He stood their casually describing the two sides of his sister, one of them pure white, and the pitch black shadow that purity had cast.  
  
“I loved and respected my sister from the bottom of my heart but at the same time I was terrified. She was always so reckless, she bullied our younger sister a lot, and even dragged me around. One day I knew for sure, my older sister was going to die due to her recklessness. It was terrifying, the thought used to keep me up at night, losing the one person even someone like me could love. But no matter how many times I told her to slow down, or asked the moon to keep her safe it was useless. Therefore I decided…I would protect her."

He clapped his hands together as if he had made a connection anybody else would make.  
  
“My friend Kajiki-kun from college, he was a human that overflowed with more love than I had ever seen. So I went through a bunch of hoops and even married into his branch family so he could marry Hato-nee, and a few years later a girl who had both Hato-nee’s strong willpower and Kajiki-kun’s love was born. Our Medaka-chan.”  
  
“Who had… both…” Matsuda finally picked himself up from the floor. “Meda-nee… you selectively bred her? It was just selectively breeding animals for you, between your sister and your dearest friend?”  
  
“Why do you keep interrupting new mystery character?” Fukurou tilted his head to the side. “It was crossbreeding, and it was a success, no the best outcome. It turned out to be too good, a girl that was even more zealous than my sister, and full of even more love than my friend. There’s no way she’d work as a replacement for my sister. In other word,s I failed in my selective breeding…” As he said that his hand quickly covered the side of his face, casting a slowly encroaching shadow. “Well, I had other plans ready but I as I had thought, Hato-nee died suddenly from overwork. She just died suddenly and left me her brother behind, how inconsiderate of her. I had no choice but to think… _That’s enough I’m sick of this. If Hato-nee won’t stay with me, or her daughter, I’ll just settle for someone similar._ All I really wanted was an important person to live for. So I chose you, Sode-chan. You can be my next Hato-nee, I don’t need to worry about replacing her anymore..”  
  
“S-someone similar? Are you saying that…I’ve never even met your sister. I can’t just pretend to be your sister.”

“I just want one important person, otherwise I won’t be human anymore.” He said, barely looking human to begin with. “I’m an adult after all so I can calmly say this. Life is a compromise, Sode-chan. I’ll put up with it and love you.”

As that man stood over the tiny girl, Shiranui’s face fell. Being forced to even listen to his twisted explanation was enough trauma for one lifetime. She felt truly bad for Kurokami Medaka for once, that she had ever come into contact with a man like this. _This is bad… he’s a true sicko._  As she thought that her smile started to wobble. _What the hell is wrong with my life? FIrst my village gets destroyed, then it turns out I was going to be a body container for Iihiko, or get married to this whacko. What’s the point of making a choice between two terrible choices. Everything that happens seems to be slowly turning me into a minus… While this situation certainly isn’t a laughing matter why is it that even now I still manage to smile like this?_

She recognized that she was horrified, or rather that she should be yet she could not make the appropriate emotion appear on her face. The same with her village, the place that she had dedicated her entire life to was reduced into a bloody ninja graveyard and yet she was casually making conversation with the two people who had orchestrated its slaughter.

“The hell are you even talking about, quit ignoring me!” Matsuda stood between the two, holding his arm in front of Shiranui protectively. Because he was an idiot who never learned, he could not stand to see her panicked in such a way.  
  
“Let’s see, going by a process of elimination. Ah! You must be my son!” Fukurou clapped his hands together as if he had just now figured it out. “Right, right, you’re my son. I did make you a long time ago, huh? Uwah, that takes me back. Come on closer and let me take a look at your face.”  
  
“...” Matsuda stared at him with a look that said _you really didn’t notice until just now?_

“Haha, what an unsociable fellow. I wonder who you took after, oh right! It’s me! Ahahahahaha! Good job, sode-chan. You brought Medaka-chan and the others to this hospital just as ordered.”  
  
“Shiranui were you…” Matsuda turned to look at the girl behind him, only for Shiranui to look just as confused at his statement. “The hell are you doing! Stop screwing around old man!”  
  
“Hahahaha! I’m joking, I’m joking. I don’t remember raising you to not get these kind of jokes. Oh wait, I don’t remember raising you at all.” That man went back to sitting in his chair,  he leaned forward and crossed his hands in front of his face. “Hmm, well you’re quite distant but I did take a look at you.Now you can go back home son, or rather what are you still doing here?”  
  
“I see. So you’re my father. You’re worthless.” Matsuda, tired of being ignored and already mentally pushed to the point of breaking did not even want to ask about the ghost that had been haunting him, he decided the old man in front of him made a better punching bag then Kumagawa at least. He picked up a scalpel and rushed the old man, only to find the room inverted in the next moment and that he was on the ceiling, then suddenly slammed onto the floor.

The man had not even moved from his chair, but Fukurou stood up then when he landed on the ground to step on his son’s neck and rub the sudden defeat in. “Hey, hey, don’t suddenly come rushing towards me like that. My heart skipped a beat there. Why are you even that mad? Jeez, I’d really like to see what your father’s like. Oh wait, that’s me again. Hahaha.”

Matsuda could not talk back, as there was a foot currenly jamming up his wind pipe.  
  
“Anyway, be careful, got it son? Your life may be lighter than a bird’s feather but mine is heavier than the weight of this world, and I mean it, I mean it!” He finally took his foot off, moving back to his desk, the only thing that was in tact in the otherwise ruined room. “Well I don’t know why you’re here but thank you my son."

"You're a sociopath."

"Your father is a sociopath and your mother is broken, lucky you."

‘.....What… What…”  
  
“Therefore, I think you’d better thank me, you know? It’s because I abandoned you, you didn’t get raised by a messed up guy like me. My beloved son… well, not that I’ve really loved you anyway.”  
  
Yasuke’s mother was gone. She was dead. She was no longer here. “You can't replace people like that there's..."

It was all Yasuke was good for, yelling and running his mouth. He was not strong enough to even get up off his knees, but that was not going to stop him from complaining bitterly to the very end.  
  
“Hey, hey, you’re a loud mouth aren’t you? It’s not like you’re any better dear son of mine. You couldn’t get over the death of your precious mother, so you tried to replace her with Junko. Those feelings are just-'

He shrugged again.  
  
“My feelings are my own."

Matsuda could not believe he was hearing this.  
He wanted to cry.  
Having anything at all in common with that old man.  
Perhaps that was why he kept seeing him in the back of his mind. It was his own sense of guilt, reminding him of what he had been doing. He invented the perfect mad scientist character to carry his own flaws.  
  
"Who are you going to grow up as, a helpless victim or a sociopath. Two choices, only two."

 Yasuke could say nothing in his defense. What was he supposed to say? I’m not the worst. He could not just go and lie like that. Especially to defend someone as terrible as himself.  
  
It was Shiranui who spoke up. “Don’t bully Matsuda-kun like that! Pretty please, professor Fukurou. I don’t want Medaka-chan to come here, and I don’t want Matsuda-kun as well so why don’t you let the two of them go home. You said you would put up with me, right? Don’t just go cheating on me like that.”  
  
“...You have a point, baby. Fine, you two can go chase Medaka-chan off. I’ll be waiting for your to return.”  
  
At that moment, she took Matsuda’s hand and dragged him out of the room. Matsuda did not regain himself until that room was at least completely out of sight. “What are you doing? Why did you help me back there, whose side are you even on?”  
  
“Hmmm, well. Hitoyoshi-kun always talked about me as someone who you could never tell what she was thinking. What am I thinking? What are my true feelings? Who do I want to side with? Who do I like more, my old friends or my new ones. I’d like to know that more than anyone else. What I’m going to do next, and what will happen next.”  
  
She said this all with a pleasant smile, but Yasuke got the sense just like Kumagawa she had no idea what face she was making at all.  
  
“I think I told too many lies.”  
  
Lies upon lies.  
Schemes upon schemes.  
As they all overlapped the truth got harder and harder to find.  
Not even giving anybody time to sort it out, they were all on a collision course destination this hospital.

The moment the door shut, Fukurou got up from his chair and stretched. He reached up and pulled at a loose string on his lab coat, as the string unraveled so to did his entire appearance, ending with his face all of it became nothing more than a tangle of red strings that were left on the ground. A pair of high heeled boots stepped over them. Her disguise shed, the fake Enoshima Junko picked up a water bottle and congratulated her on a scene well played.  
  
The second fake Junko finally wriggled out of the rope they were tied up in and sighed. “Don’t you think it’s a little extra, having two people pretend to be Junko at once?”  
  
“Please, I live my life by one rule. There can never be enough Junko.”  
  
Formerly minion A who had graduated to Junko B sighed. “So, how much of that was actually the truth?”  
  
“Who knows what was going on in that whacked head of his. I mean I guess I know because he left this behind after he was murderized.” Junko A pulled out a disc from her skirt. “Copied down memories, a prototype to the alter ego program that made Junkai. If Matsuda-kun had this he could talk to the real man himself.”  
  
Then suddenly she snapped the disc between her fingers and threw it aside. “Whoopsie. Anyway go mop up that fake blood off the floor.”  
  
As she stepped over the corpse, she retrieved the cape once more and underneath it was the body of the real Matsuda Fukurou. Strangled to death and perfectly preserved as he had been all those years ago.

“Still, why did you go so far as to imitate him?” Junko B asked.  
  
Junko A sighed, feeling like she was talking to Iihiko again who needed everything explained to his boring self because he could not leap to the conclusions on his own. Who was the idiot that took an egg beater to his brain again? Oh, that was her. “We need to convince Sode-chan to her side, she needs to believe that her little friends won’t come save her so her only option is to destroy everything around her and… well Matsuda-kun is just for funsies.”  
  
“You’ve got a terrible sense of fun. No wonder nobody wants to play with you.” Junko B sneered, sticking out his tongue.  
  
“People are a lot like fictional characters you know. I don’t believe in things like fate or destiny, but say if you’re unloved as a child and you spend the rest of your life chasing the illusion of love isn’t that the same thing as having your whole life written out in advance? Fate is just a fancy word for things you can’t change. Nothing’s going to fix Matsuda-kun, he’ll be an orphan forever, that’s going to write out the rest of his life, it was determined like that. I bet he’ll have another big freakout and regress again it’s so much fun.” Then suddenly she changed her mood and started snapping out orders. “Now move that body already!”

“Where did you even find this old dead guy?”  
  
“When Kaiki-kun called us to clean up his mess two years ago I was like, oh hey free dead body. There’s no need to let a perfectly good prop go to waste like that. A mastermind who suddenly shows up at the end with zero foreshadowing and claims to be behind absolutely everything, I love characters like that.”

Junko B sighed and decided to just go along with it, before Junko A launched into another bossy tirade. He stuck his tongue out and decided it would be better to go back to singing so nobody could approach this room. On his tongue was the kanji character for childhood. “Sleepy. Baby, sleep. Oh, my baby, sleep.” He picked up the still in tact speaker system and sung, letting his voice echo through the rest of the abandoned hospital.

 

😈

 

 

“Sleep, baby sleep. Oh my baby. My good baby it’s your last moment. Oh die, my baby.”

Kumagawa and Junko had run down the hallway looking for Matsuda, only to find both Medaka and Zenkichi waiting for them. By the time they all had met up though, they were all children. Junko with her small red pig tails, Kumagawa dragging a bunny behind him, Zenkichi wearing a hoodie his mom gave him, and Medaka with her hair still tied back in one bow.  
  
“There’s somebody off in the distance singing, and that’s the reason we’re getting younger because super natural mumbo jumbo, whatever I’m bored…”

『Don’t just get bored in the middle of your sentence! I swear you’re getting worse..』

Zenkichi however did not have super hearing, or 10,000/20 vision granted to him by super high school level analysis. “Singing…? But, I can’t hear anyone singing right now.”  
  
“Huh? What? Hitoyoshi-kun do you doubt what I’m saying? What a deplorable personality. You don’t even trust what you friends say?” Junko threw her arms up carelessly. “In the future, when you end up useless and adrift in your deepest despair, I’ll be the one you turn to you know.”  
  
“I don’t remember you becoming my friend! And I’ll hang myself if I ever sink so low that I have to depend on you for anything!”  
  
“Didn’t you already do that HItoyoshi-kun? Why are you still alive in fact, you can’t even hang yourself properly.” They were terrible words to come out of a two year old’s mouth.  
  
Zenkichi instead ran away and went to tattle to Medaka, hiding behind her. “Medaka-chan, what’s the deal with her? Why does somebody as mean as her even have to come along.”  
  
“I’m sorry Zenkichi, even I don’t know why she’s here.” Medaka said, understanding why even someone as emotionally dead as Kamukura reached peak exasperation around this girl.

『Well, as a result of this I got to see the cute chibi Junko so I consider this death defying adventure worth it.』  
  
“You’re damn right I’m cute.”  
  
The two terrible toddlers in the corner did not even seem to realize they were being gossiped about. “You two pay attention. Since we’ve been wandering around this hospital our bodies began rejuvenating. The closer we get to the fourth floor the younger we get, conversely the farther away we get we return to our ages. Judging fro the gap between our footprints it sees to be a geometric progression. If we assume the ratio between progression in y meters and x years of rejuvenation is two. The next progression y would make us younger by 2x.”  
  
“Nerd.” Junko interrupted.  
  
“Junko, shut up please.” It was much easier when Ajimu was the one babysitting Junko, Medaka decided.

“Then, we can’t take another step.” Zenkichi continued. “We’ll all be stupid babies if we go any further, well Junko is already a baby.”  
  
“No, Zenkichi that won’t do either. If we become younger the more we advance it must means, she must have set up the stage and is waiting for us in that inner part.”

“Like I said I don’t hear anyone singing.” Zenkichi cupped his hands around his tiny baby ears. “If we heard creepy singing in an abandoned hospital we the trap would not work, we’d just run.”

“There’s no need for us to hear it. For humans the audible range is 20 hz to 20 khz, anything at higher frequency is an ultrasonic wave and lower frequency is infrasonic. We can’t hear either of those, but they can still have an affect on the human body.”

As Medaka gave her lecture, Kumagawa stared at all of this science with blank eyes and a blank smile as always. He had stopped understanding what everybody was saying awhile ago. Perhaps because his iq had not changed at all since he was this young. His child self with pure white hair clutched onto the rabbit at his side, feeling it was his only companion amongst all of these geniuses, including Zenkichi a genius of hard work who was still bothering to keep up. Then suddenly, Kumagawa ripped off the head of his stuffed rabbit Yuuki, and revealed a screw underneath.『I don’t understand that complicated stuff but to put it simply, we should just screw over our opponent, right?』

“Kumagawa-senpai… Have you used your screws since you were four?”

『Ahahahahaaha! Even if I launch my screw into the distance like this they surely won’t get younger!』He picked up the screw the size of his head and threw everything he had into it. Only for the screw to go a few centimeters and then plop down into the ground. Kumagawa took this failure as he always did, with a smile shrugging it off. .『...Huh. I see my physical strength returned to when I was four years old too. Looks like I can’t use my plan to throw it this time.』  
  
“You were so confident back there, don’t pretend like it was just a test! If you’re going to fail, fail with style!” Junko said grabbing him by the ear and dragging him back. Apparently even when they were little kids he was still going to get dragged around by her whims like this. Even though he was not even her childhood friend. 

『Ow, Junko my ear. Wait what happened to Yuuki-kun? Why did you rip my beloved stuffed  friend’s head off? Your jealousy is starting to become a problem.』  
  
“You obviously just did that right now! I saw you do it!”

 『I can’t believe you manipulated me into ripping my best friend’s head off. It’s not my fault!』Kumagawa said in his usual voice as he was shaken back and forth carelessly by her.  
  
“Let’s see, what about all fiction. Can’t you use it to make it as if we never became any younger?” Zenkichi offered trying hard to be helpful and stay on topic.

 『I already tried that too. It didn’t work, or rather I should say I couldn’t use it. Because I only obtained my all fiction during my third year of MIddle School, at this point in time I haven’t met anshini’n-san yet. Of course Junko was mentally two years old all her life so she’s pretty much the same with her analysis.』 Kumagawa looked into the distance. 『Besides I promised Kaiki-kun I wouldn’t rely on All Fiction anymore so I shouldn’t use it. 』  
  
“Wait, what happened with Kaiki-kun? Are you okay dude? Why am I so behind with everyone?”  
  
“Dunno, probably because you suck.” Junko said, sneering at Zenkichi.  
  
“Would all of you be quiet!”  
  
Medaka who had been carefully managing her patience this entire time, finally lost it. She slammed her foot on the ground and screamed hard enough to throw her head back in a roar like a true lion. That was enough of a sound to deflect the sounds they were being assaulted with, like a wave crashing  into another wave. From two year olds, they immediately grew back up again into high school age students.

“See, I told you in times like this the best thing to do is to throw a tantrum until you get what you want. Medaka-chan is learning after all.” Junko said, posing with a hand on her hip in pride.  
  
“Shut up! What the hell would you know about Medaka-chan?” Zenkichi snapped back at her.  
  
『You really are the best Junko, you’re even the most talented here at being a spoiled brat. You’re like a top tier spoiled brat, a spoiled princess among spoiled princesses.』  
  
“That’s right, a dirty pauper like you not even fit to lick these kickass heels of mine better not forget it..”  
  
“Wait a second! Kumagawa-senpai I just noticed this when did you start calling Enoshima-san by her first name without any honorific!? Since when did you two start lovingly banterin like that, how come you’re way more progressed in your relationship arc then I am.” Zenkichi was just yelling at this point because he was completely lost.  
  
Kumagawa stopped paying attention to him however..『Medaka-chan, I think the best option is for us to split up again. You go alone to hunt down the person using this style on us and we’ll stay as a lookout for Shiranui-chan.』  
  
Medaka nodded solemnly at that and took a step forward. “I’ve always reached my goals by taking the first step forward. Don’t worry I had fast growth as a kid, I should be able to walk until I reach zero years old so it’s not like I’ll disappear even if I get lost in this place.”

Zenkichi looked even more lost when Medaka turned the corner and left him behind. Uneasy, his eyes shifted between Junko and Kumagawa. Probably the two people he would least like to be stuck with. Though that was probably unfair of him since he had no problem hanging out with Kamukura and Komaeda who were basically the same.

『Don’t look so worried Zenkichi-chan. I just said that to get rid of Medaka-chan so I could greet our new guest.』 He waved his hand playfully in the air. .『Hihi, Shiranui-chan. Were you spying on us? Thanks for bringing my beloved Yasuke-chan back to me.』

Suddenly in the hallway appeared a confused looking Yasuke Matsuda, being dragged along by the hand by the much smaller Shiranui.  
  
At the sight of her, Zenkichi was the firs tto lose his mind. He had been doing that a lot since waking up. “Shiranui!? Are you the one responsible for the trap, why are you trying to cahse us away?”  
  
“Won’t you please be quiet, you-who-are-not-my-friend? I didn’t come here to talk with you-who-are-not-my-friend>” Shiranui said back with an easygoing smile as usual.  
  
“Gh… You-who-are-not-my-friend! Then, who did you come to talk with?”

As Zenkichi yelled back, Shiranui merely turned her head and ignored him. “It’s you, Kumagawa-senpai. Won’t you make a deal with me?”

Kumagawa looked genuinely surprised. It seemed this was the first time in his life somebody wanted to talk with him over Zenkichi, a landmark moment.『Hey, hey, it wasn’t my fault everybody forgot about you. That was Yasuke-chan’s doing okay? It’s not like I can erase memories I’m too dumb to do that.』  
  
“Yeah, okay whatever. You’re impossible as usual. I want to settle this bothersome development as soon as possible, therefore Kumagawa-senpai, please betray Medaka-chan and come to my side. Just like on jabberwock island, you don’t really care about anybody else as long as you and Junko remain safe right? Actually, you’ve been like that since you set up your fake little student council you’ve fallen out of the Medaka-chan fanclub or awhile now. I understand, so let’s get along well as fellow minus okay?”

 『Shiranui-chan. You’re right I’m sorry, it’s all my fault. I did such a half assed job of erasing everyone’s memories of you, I shouldn’t blame Yasuke-chan anymore.』Kumagawa had stopped joking around as he stepped away from Junko and from behind oput a hand on Zenkichi’s shoulder. Zenkichi was immediately alarmed as he knew that Kumagawa was at his scariest when he finally stopped joking and became serious. Kumagawa took another step and put his hand on Matsuda’s opposite shoulder. .『In fact since Yasuke-chan and I both made up, I want to help him from now on. That’s why this time I’ll fix things good. I’ll return you to evil for good.』  
  
As he said that, from both of his hands, two large screws emerged driving striaght into Yasuke and Zenkichi. Kumagawa Misogi’s grey eyes looked forward, an indecsive, unpreditacle color between hope and despair. .『All Fiction. I made it so that Hitoyoshi Zenkichi and Matsuda Yasuke never existed. There, that should fix the two princesses.』  
  
“Misogi what the hell are you doing going off script and improvising like that-”  
  
Kumagawa suddenly turned around and reached for Junko's face with his hand. As if it was a clumsy way of ssshing her. He stopped short of grabbing her, and touched a finger playfully to her lips instead.『The late Anshin’in-san gave me hundred gauntlets back, a good bye kiss as she died, or a bite rather. WIthout exaggerating, I can make everything nothing. A minus that can’t be recovered.』

“Then…He won’t be able to come back.”

『That’s right! This is what you wanted, Junko! To feel the despair of losing Yasuke-chan again! Except I’ve given you an even greater despair, the despair of never having met him in the first place. I gave Shiranui what she wanted too, to sever her ties with Zenkichi. Finally an ending where everyone’s happy! I do my best as a pauper to spoil my princesses!』

Junko tried to be angry, but her face went slack with boredom and she stopped struggling against Kumagawa. Kumagawa simply let her go with his hand, and even let her lean against him.

『It’s not like you have any right to complain, you killed Kaiki-kun, Anshin’in-san died, and you even killed Yasuke-chan once. Why don’t you share my pain with me, that’s what you wanted isn’t it?』  
  
Kumagawa reached up and cradled the back of her head for a moment, slowly moving her out of his embrace and guiding her to stand on her own again.

 『Well, even if it wasn’t what you wanted you won’t stop me. Acting on your true feelings isn’t something someone like you can do, you don’t even have true feelings probably...』

As the two of them performed their scene, Shiranui simply stare at the spot Zenkichi was a moment ago. Expecting him to return unharmed as he normally did. Overcome the situation with tremendous bravery and pluck as he normally did. Smile as he normally did. “What… what did you… what the hell did you do to my best friend, you bastard!? I’ll fucking kill you, Kumagawaaaaa!”

The moment after Shiranui said such a thing, she clapped her hands over her mouth. She looked anxious, scared to have expressed so much of an unfamiliar emotion at once without conscious control.

 『...Your real feelings have finally come out, huh Shiranui-chan? You’re just like, you couldn’t become friends with Medaka-chan either, but you became friends with Zenkichi-chan. But in spite of that you went and said something insincere and cruel like that he wans’t your friend. What kind of person hurts people with their words like that.』Kumagawa genuinely did not seem to know. He shrugged it off again, with a smile he anounced..『I hate lies. Therefore, Shiranui-chan I can’t get along with you. Still I wish you’d stop with those random outbursts of anger. The one who abandoned Zenkichi-chan with someone dangerous like me, was none other than you, you know?』  
  
That dig was obviously directed at Junko as well.  
The person who kept pushing the responsibility of helping the childhood friend that she broke, was none other than herself.  
Kumagawa took a step forward leaving Junko behind to watch as she always did.  
As she watched she thought.  
_Oh, I forgot. Kumagawa was dangerously unstable because I made an oopsie._ _  
_ _Maybe counting on him to be the stable one between the three of us was a bad idea._ _  
_ _That’s like a double oopsie.  
__  
_ As Kumagawa took each step the shadow lengthened. Even falling over half his face, as his smile became nothing more than a wide crescent of a moon taking up the other half of his face. 『So, it’s your fault if now he’s vanished from this world, and become someone who can’t return. It’s not my fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it feels great when it’s your fault.』

Shiranui reached into her skirt, while her hands were still trembling she pulled out knives, forks and all sorts of utensils. “Kumagawa… are you sure you didn’t think you could score an easy win just because I’m your opponent, right? This is the first time I learned there are people not talking to in this world. ”

『What are you saying all of a sudden? It’s because I’m worthless that I’m a minus, I love this quality of mine. Well, I’m still me so I’ll probably lose, but unlike Kaiki-kun who was trying to make me healthier, Ajimu-san was a good big sister and gave me a new shonen super power.』He crossed his arms, summoning a large flat head screw in each one. .『Here, it’s ready. My incomplete complete minus, april fiction. Kaiki-kun said I shouldn’t fight, and shouldn’t use a minus anymore, but he’s dead now so I’m no longer under any obligation to follow that order.』

If Kumagawa were narrating this he probably would say with a nihilists smile. The best part of a recovery is the relapse, that’s the most fun. If Junko was narrating this, she would say that’s just called Diet Cheat Day.  
  
Either way, Kumagawa Misogi stood opposite of Shiranui Hansode. That engima, the wild card, the joker, even Enoshima could never tell what he was thinking, especially in this moment, but he’s not someone who acts without thinking at all.  
  
In the next moment from the floor several flat ended screws emerged from the ground like bamboo shoots. Both Kumagawa and Shiranui jumped at the sae time to keep their balance, and Junko’s analysis allowed her to automatically readjust in heels. It was quite impressive, but nobody was paying attnetion to her.  
  
“April fiction? What’s that, Kumagawa-senpai.”

『Ahahaha, don’t panic. This is just a shallow battle between fellow minuses. That pointless kind of fight because talking about our feelings is lame. I thought we could at least make our stage ore exciting and weekly shonen jump-ish .』  
  
“Wo...woah. The-there. All right.”  
  
『Be careful. If you slip you’ll meet a sea of sulfuric acid. Nah, that’s not rue. But even if these screws aren’t pointed, the weight alone is enough to pierce, it may hurt more than the sharp ones.』Kumagawa put his hand on the flat end of one screw and and did a one handed handstand easily. 『I call this battlefield leg-eating forest! As if, these days you don’t see these kinds of battles anymore. Even in weekly shonen jump. Well, let’s put on a good show for my beloved Junko, so she doesn’t get bored again.』  
  
“Leg eating forest…”  
  
Shiranui watched, as Kumagawa casually jumped around, even doing back flips and landing on the screws trying to look impressive. _April fiction. Leg eating forest. They’re just his usual bluffs. He has no intention of seriously fighting me. He’s just trying to make me use my skill Real-Eater. He’s trying to make me change his skill from a skill that can’t be reversed into one that lets you reverse it’s effect. When I do that, he’ll be able to undo all the memories at hope’s peak that were previously made nothing._ _  
_ _  
_ A dirty plan.

A gamble that put both of their beloved best firend’s on the line.  
Because to Kumagawa that was the only way a game could be fun.  
Noticing that he was just screwing around on the screws.  
  
Shiranui imediately started to leap forward, dashing in a zig zag pattern between those screws. _But you know Kumagawa-senpai. When a scheme gets exposed, it’s no longer a scheme._

『Oh. Woah there!』Kumagawa threw his body out of the way of the knives and forks she was holding between her fingers, but still some of his precious Junko Love sweater was torn by the attack. .『Hey, hey, what’s up Shiranui-chan? Did you awaken some super power because of your rage? Where did the you that was weaker than a rhinoceros beetle go!?』  
  
“I am in fact weak, but even so I eat the strong ones. I call it giant eating. You’re so weak you’ll taste poorly, but! Crunch, curnch! I’ll eat you, Kumagawa-senpai!”  
  
Kumagawa endured her barrage of blows as usual. Only jumping back when he had gotten bored of dodging, balancing on one foot on top of a screw a few meters away from her. .『Ahahahaha! Shiranui-chan attacking me like that, you’ve made my sweater look very avant-garde! I’m glad you took the time to carefully make preparations.』  
  
Every time she struck, Kumagawa could avoid her by a hair on instinct alone. The times he got hit were when he wanted to get hit. The gap of combat experience between the was about as large as the gap between their heights. “Kumagawa-senpai, please stop your charade. You want to make me use my real eater, right? Yet, you keep running and jumping all over the place.”  
  
Kumagawa thoughtfull cupped his hand to his face. .『Hmm? AH, you see. Now that you mention it it was like that at first, but those trivial things don’t matter anymore! Right, now I’m just happy to have a battle fair with you fair and suqare Shiranui-chan. In fact I may have been born just to fight you!』

 _He’s just provoking me. As if I could be fooled by that. I’m the unsociable and uncooperative type, I won’t show any more of the real me._  “I’ll use real eater on you, and change it so you can only undo the last thing you’ve undone. This way Hitoyoshi will be able to come back. Then, I’ll force Medaka-chan to choose between endangering Hitoyoshi and savin me. This conversation…” For added emphasis and drama, Shiranui jumped into the air. “Is now over, Kumagawa-senpai!”

『...Hey now, don’t be so desperate that’s my trademark you know.』He took a casual step bck on one of the screws. .『This footing is bad, so even if you want to fight in the air I have no reason to play along with you. I can just wait for you to land...I love lazy solutions like that.』

Kumagawa rushed to the point where she would land, only to hesitate and see she had no landed as she should have. He looked up from the space where she should have been, and saw Shiranui hanging from the ceiling with a corkscrew. .『You screwed the ceiling with that?』  
  
“Screwing things is your trademark, right Kumagawa-senpai?” As she let herself go, she used the force of her fall to eblow him with everything she had.  
  
『Ah. Damn...』Kumagawa reacted like he had tripped, with the usual nonchalance but when he fell back into the blunt screws with enough force to push the through his skin, in between two of his ribs, his hip, and one at his shoulder whatever smart remark he had next became lost in the twisted garbles of his screams. An inhuman noise as nothing more than mixed human nonsense and pain came from his mouth. 『Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhh!!!!』If most overwhelming nonspecific noise was called white noise, than this was more like pitch black noise.

“Are you happy now that you could experience the jump battle that you longed for? Well, now we’re at the climax and my meal is served. Time to eat, Kumagawa-senpai.” Even as he was punctured and twisted apart by screws she climbed on top of his body, forcing more screws further into him as she grabbed on both of the sides of his face.

However as she tried to use it, she found nothing happened. “W...why? Why can’t I use my skill, real eater?”

Kumagawa merely smiled despite the blood he had coughed up and the pain his body was racked with. .『Did you even need to ask, Shiranui-chan? Book maker! Everything about you is now on my level, those who get pierced by bookmaker have everything sealed. Just like me, you can’t do anything anymore.』  
  
The flat ended screw had sharpened to a point and been driven through both of them. “N-no, that’s absurd. You didn’t have time to use it unless… every single one of those screws was just a bookmaker screw. Then, there was no april fiction, or no new shonen powers.”

As she realized that, the screws they were standing on disappeared. Kumagawa’s body was completely intact, he stood up unharmed, but Shiranui had a screw jammed through her chest and her hair had completely whitened.

“Don’t mess with me.”

『Mess with you I shall. Shiranui-chan, it seems you had quite the faith in your decieving skills. But if it comes down to making fools out of one another, it seems that I...』At this, Kuagawa’s smile deepened, and widened, it grew more foolish, more reckless, more careless.『Am ahead of you by a small margin.』  
  
Even though she suddenly felt too weak to stand, Shiranui forced herself up. “Do you think you’ve won? If I don’t use my real eater, you can’t save Hitoyoshi and Matsuda.”

『Hey, hey, why would I have to save Zenkcchi-chan? Actually, who is this Zenkichi-chan? I don’t remember him at all. Medak-chan only asked me to save you, not Zen-what’s-his face, and sir handsome-grumpyface. My job here is done, I guess if you’re still unwilling I can break both your legs and drag you back.』Casually, he turned around swinging his arms as he walked in a carefree way. .『Come now, Shiranui-chan. Let’s return to our beloved Hope’s Peak Academy, you too Junko. I got my revenge on you so I finished what I came here to do. Let’s rebuild from square one, after all people always get a chance to do it over again, like Kaiki-kun taught me.』

 "Stop it. You'll lose Matsuda as well. It's not just HItoyoshi who you hate who'll suffer."

As Kumagawa said that and turned his back to her the last thing she saw of his face was his carefree smile. Just like the cheshire cat the last thing to disappear was always his smile, he was even harder to understand, more cryptic than she was. 『Why should I care about that? It's like you said, I only care about Junko now.』

 _This is just a trap._ _  
_ _An obvious bluff._ _  
_ _He’s trying to break me down._ _  
_ _  
_ Yet, Shiranui’s hand moved without her realizing it. She grabbed onto his ankle, and refused to let him take another step.

『What do you think you’re doing? Gosh, Shiranui-chan you can’t even be a puppet correctly. Why are you suddenly pretending to have real feelings. You’re just lying and acting again.』  
  
“Wait, Zenkichi… It’s my loss… It’s my fault… so Zenkichi. Hitoyoshi I’m…”

 『Useless puppet. This isn’t a game. I hate games. Don’t think I’d just call it even and stop playing around just because you admitted defeat.』Kumagawa raised his foot and kicked her down once more.  
  
He picked up two of his screws ready to finish her off.  
  
However after that point, three minutes had passed. The time limit on Kumagawa’s bluff ended, and Zenkichi appeared suddenly, grabbing at both of the screws. “You don’t need to apologize. You’re already forgiven. Kumagawa-senpai, I kinda understand what you’re trying to do here but… I wanna hit you once for bullying my friend.”

 『Heh. Once again, I couldn’t win.』  
  
At that moment, Yasuke appeared behind them as well. He grabbed Kumagawa by the shoulders and dragged him away before he could get hit. “You’re such a muscle head you've got almost no brain left, Heat. Don’t solve things with punching all the time, this guy’s been smacked around too much already he can’t take much more of it.”  
  
“Geez. And here I thought he was being docile lately like Junko domesticated him or something. I guess his true nature hasn’t changed at all.” Zenkichi only hesiated from smacking him around because Matsuda was in the way. “Unskilled, the skill to undo the effects of all other skills for a maximum of three minutes. Mixing it with your all ficiton, you must have made it a skill that maks it like it didn’t happen’ for three minutes before returning to normal. By the way Shiranui… that’s why I told you to be careful around Kumagawa-”

The moment he said that, he saw that there were tears in Shiranui’s eyes. At that moment she had realized her real feelings, they had been dragged out of her the more she tried to push them under the surface. However, that did not make her feelings towards the Fake Junko who had destroyed her village any lesser as well.  
  
Seeing tears on his friends face, Zenkichi hesitated afraid he might have only hurt her with what he said. He reached forward to try to grab her, only for the tiny Shiranui to fall out of his grasp and disappear once more.

『Awe, that’s too bad. Once she’s realized her true feelings there’s no going back. I wanted to see her real smile at that moment. You know I’m not just a pauper, I’m a thief who steals princesses hearts no matter how tightly they lock them away.』

To bring their true feelings to the surface.  
Even if it meant tearing their hearts out.  
In the most brutal method possible.  
Tear, rend, flesh, rip, scrape, slash, wound, cut, twist, streeeeeetching the flesh to its limit, until it comes apart at the seams, those were words that suited Kumagawa far more than anything else. He turned back to his own princess finally, his perfect princess who always stood perfectly still. He hoped at least to see the despair painted on her face.

However he did not get the chance to see her face at all, because the moment he turned around she ran and dug her face right into his chest. “Stupid stupid stupid stupid Kumagawa. Lame lame lame lame lame. Even when you’re cool, you’re lame how is that possible?”  
  
Kumagawa knew her well, that was why when he knew when she started to lose it she punctuated her sentences with that many ‘lames’ . She continued to murmur those words over and over again into his chest, a hint of sadness in her murmuring voice.  
  
Her true feelings. She was overwhelmed by her true feelings, like a sand grain stuck in a super computer causing it to crash she could no longer process. Matsuda Yasuke was an especially important existence for Enoshima Junko. Ever since they were children, he always stood up for her, always continued to unconditionally love her, and above all, just being by his side made her heart feel warm.  
  
But, that existence was killed off by someone else’s hands. Stepped on, forced past the gates of despair, brutally murdered. By Kumagawa MIsogi.  
  
Who ever since they first had met, even though he was constantly in pain and wanted to be saved from that pain more than anything else always put her in front of himself. He was always by her side no matter how much she pushed him away. He always tried to understand her, and see things her way, and because of that she always had someone laughing with her by her side.  
  
The carefree days full of laughter everybody else had, and she had when she was Ryoko, she was starting to wonder if she could ever have them with him. Yet he was the one who had ripped Yasuke away from her just now, entirely for her sake. He forced himself to hurt somebody he cared about that just like that. He was so bright, so warm, but his warmth burnt, his brightness blinded her, and she was burned so much she felt like she was going to melt.  
  
She loved him so much, an irreplaceable existence, a new existence that had fallen out of the sky like a fallen star and into her hands. More important than anyone else, almost obsessed with him to the point of insanity, always wanting to be in his embrace, even living in a world with only him would be fine. Those overlapping feelings tugged at her, she felt the strings wrap around her, tighter than ever, tight enough to strangle her, she was not as disconnected as she thought.  
  
“Ahahahaa, too depressing, my chest is gonna tear open! This is true self loathing. I want to die! This is… This is…”  
  
Flowing out of her eyes there was a continuous stream of tears, Kumagwa could feel it even if she had hidden away the true face she was making right now from him. Tears of delight, lament, and conclusion overwhelmingly flowed.  
  
She had almost gotten lost in the nonsense, thinking that her feelings were not real, that she did not care about others, thoughts like that, thinking them, and thinking them over again as her brain was ought to do.  
  
She was so good at convincing others, she had even convinced herself. That all of these feelings only existed for the purpose of despair, when she felt something it was the culmination of a scheme on her part, when she spent time with someone she was only using them, that this was the only way to make herself feel. Because of that her feelings for those people always felt light with artifice, she loved her sister because she wanted to feel the despair of tormenting a beloved family member, she tricked herself into catching feels for Yauske over fifteen years because she wanted to destroy someone who had always been her side for that long.  
  
She assumed those feelings were a manipulation on her part, and therefore they always seemed one sided like she was pushing her love onto others. Like she did not really care about how they felt back in the end. Like their feelings did not exist, and at the same time that made her own feelings not exist.  
  
Yet at that moment she realized something so simple. Perhaps she had come to feel that way about Mukuro and Yasuke, and spent all that time with them because she simply liked that. She had grown to like them naturally, her feelings of love for them existed at the same time as her feelings of desire. They were not mutually exclusive. And she had been the one to distance herself from her own feelings.  
  
Because they were too heavy for her, because she was a fragile, perfect doll that would remain perfect as long as it was untouched. She could not remember the last time she cried this hard, this uncontrollably. She was lacking in any control at all, and that’s what was making her feelings flood over so much and gushing out of her eyes at this moment, because she had been controlling them too much before this point, controlling them for herself, controlling them for others.  
  
Childhood friend. Loved one. Lost Loved One. Matsuda Yasuke. Toy I must break. Did she ever stop and try to see him as a person? Until this point, she had not been appreciating him properly, so after her big high of despair she came crashing down and experienced diminishing returns over and over again, and started to numb herself, but that was her fault for overdosing in the first place.

Sinking, deeper and deeper into water, feeling that numbness infect her entire body as if drowning. As it washed over her, she did not even try to swim to the surface. She just thought, _I never had any real feelings after all, there wasn’t a real me after all… probably something like that_ and started to lose sight of herself as well.  
  
If it was not for a foolish boy who jumped into the water not caring whether or not he would have drowned, Junko might have been lost entirely. No, even one step further. He was happy to drown with her. At least that way she would not drown alone even if neither of them made it to the surface or saw the light again. How many times had he jumped after her like this with no hesitation at all. How many times did he seem to know her like she knew herself.

 _Even if I told a lie.  
_ _Even if I manipulated.  
_ _There were real feelings behind it at the time.  
_ _The subtle dance between a lie and the true intentions behind it, that's like us isn't it?_

She wanted to.  
Just once do the same for him.  
To know him in the same way.  
There was no closer relationship than a person and the shadow always at their feet, right?  
If she could be something like that even a pale shade of a person like herself could always be close to him.

It’s not like she wanted to reform or anything. She wanted to feel something real. Even if she had to chase it to the ends of the earth, even if she had to twist someone up so much she was wringing them out.  
  
That’s right she would do anything.  
Anything, anything, anything for the sake of despair.  
Since when did she start sitting back and doing nothing? Acting all lame and better than everything like Kamukura?  
Since when did she become a despair cheerleader? She was not just some watcher. She was the main event. The show revolved around her. Everything should.  
She wanted, she wanted, she wanted, and she wanted some more.

Junko wiped at her face, her makeup was smeared by that and her tears. Just face it head on for once, don't run away inside your own head. “Yasuke-kun, my real feelings I… I’m sorry. I made you love me. But I love you in a different way. I love you enough to kill you.”

Those simple words.  
She spoke her true emotions, not expecting anything out of it.  
  
“Don’t say something messed up like that like it’s romantic or some big revelation, god I hate you.” Yasuek said, returning to his usual bad mood. “Tch, meeting my dad, getting erased, and then having to stare at your ugly face I should be more upset than this. You know I always pretended to be an aloof and distant guy who kept his real emotions locked away somewhere safe, but in the end it turns out that I was just a guy who was aloof to the world.”  
  
That was the same for both of them.  
In other words they had both distanced themselves from their emotions, they had both taken themselves too seriously.  
  
As Junko continued to lean against Kumagawa, Yasuke approached from behind and hugged the other side of him.  
  
It was getting hard to stand, getting dragged around like this was tiring and… He thought he realized what made him different from that other mad scientist. He had these two. Sure, they were awful, but it was the kind of awful he deserved right now.  
  
They were each other’s punishment.  
They kept hurting each other, yet they held onto each other like this as well.  
  
Kumagawa patted Junko on the head when she hid her face again once more. “See, see, your feelings are real. You just bury them too deep in that head of yours. Don’t worry, if you lose sight of them again, I’ll just crack your skull.”  
  
He said those words rather sweetly even though they were a threat. He even kissed her softly, on that head of hers.  
  
“Your feelings aren’t lies, so I don’t hate you Junko.”  
  
“I don’t hate you too,” Junko murmured back.  
  
“I hate both of you.”  
  
I really do. 


	31. Beautiful Coffin

_Who am I really?_ _  
_ _All I did was for you._ _  
_ _I love you little sister._ _  
_ _But now I don’t know -_

 _Junko’s older sister._ _  
_ _Ultimate Despair._ _  
_ _Soldier A._ _  
_ _Who I am._ _  
_ _  
_ She had spent her entire life watching her sister, that was why she knew her better than anyone else. Even if she did not know herself, she would still know her sister.  
  
After all, it was because of that sister she had a family in the first place. Yet, it was also because of that sister that she had nearly been murdered several times by her only family. Still, it was because of her sister she had survived this long.  
  
So she could never completely reject her sister either. She loved the idea of family, and she loved this world she could share with her family, what would happen if she ended up hating something that was so intimately connected to both of them?  
  
She had been plagued with such anxieties since childhood. To Mukuro who ignored the outside world her sister was more alive than anyone else. From a young age Mukuro knew how to kill, she experienced the feeling of squeezing a life between her fingers and watching it drain away. She realized how fragile human beings were. All because of her sister as well. That was why she thought somebody like her who was surrounded by death could tell when something was especially lively.  
  
Her sister always dancing about place to place, she was the one who always moved all on her own, brightly blazing a path forward, and Mukuro was the shadow who could only cling to her feet, trail at her footsteps. Her sister was full of life, no she seemed to be trying harder to live than anybody else in the whole world. Though, Mukuro was not a good source on the rest of the world.  
  
Nobody was trying to live their school life to their fullest like Junko. That was why Mukuro was compelled to protect that life. That was why no matter how terrible she acknowledged her sister was, or how terrible she was treated, the sum total of all of those terrible things never was large enough to sway the sheer admiration she had for her sister.  
  
Her sister was alive, she wanted to live, but at the same time the way Junko lived was teetering at the edge of death. She was like someone who would dance with a suicidal jumper on the edge of a rooftop even knowing the risk of getting pulled down to. Her sister seemed alive and dead at the same time.  
  
It was like she was in a box, but not that overused cat in the box metaphor. If Mukuro had to picture some way to describe her sister, it would be from a disney movie she saw when she was young, when Junko went through her princess phase (a phase she probably never left, the same way Mukuro never left her soldier phase).  In the movie snow white, there was a scene that after biting the poison apple snow white falls into a death like sleep. Not knowing what to do, the seven dwarves who had become like a new family to her place her in a beautiful glass coffin filled with flowers.  
  
Despite being in a sleep so deep it was like death, that beautiful princess lips as red as an apple and skin as pale as snow, still looked exactly as beautiful as she had been when she was alive. As if she had chosen merely to rest in that coffin, on a bed of flowers of every different color of life, and at any time she could awake.

  
If Mukuro had to describe what her sister was like it was that, her sister was beautiful but she was like a beautiful coffin. As long as she remained there she might as well have been dead. Thinking back, even though she had wanted nothing more than to live for her sister her entire life, Mukuro wondered if she had ever truly lived up until now. Or, was she just in the beautiful coffin like her sister.  
  
That coffin it was deceitful, because its walls were made of glass so you could easily trick yourself into thinking that you were seeing the outside world, that you were apart of it, when you really weren’t. The only way to realize was to reach your hand out forward and press your fingers against the glass.

In her dream this time Mukuro did not dream of a happiness she never experienced. Rather than staring at a portatin in a gallery, she was in a field of flowers, staring at the glass coffin once more. When she pressed her fingers against the glass case and looked closer, the face of the princess sleeping within was no longer Junko, but rather Makoto.

At which point Mukuro turned to panic, and that dream turned into a nightmare which was strange for her. She never thought she could dream something worse than her waking reality. Quickly she pushed the glass case off, until it shattered against the ground. Mukuro leaned forward and pressed her lips against the sleeping Makoto’s. She had no idea if what she wanted in that moment, was to wake him up, or merely bite into the same rotten apple he had bitten in, and taste the last of the poison on his lips so at least he would not be laying in this coffin alone.   
  
This was a dream however, Mukuro may be a character in a tragicomedy but she had not reached such an ending quite yet. All kissing Makoto did was move her to a different part of the dream.  
  
As she raised her head she forgot about the scenery around her and instead looked at the broken glass on the ground, and watched projected onto the fragments a scene of her memories play out.

That time at the Hot Springs.  
The first time someone looked at her, no looked at all of her with nothing in between them.

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Of course I-” Makoto was cut off by a lip locking against his. He decided he didn’t really mind it though, no, this was the kind of thing that was normal between teenagers his age anyway. It was obvious neither one of them had any particular idea what they were doing. Makoto’s lips were cracked and rough, a boy’s lips, that seemed obvious but she was inexperienced with this sort of thing and mostly every when it came to dealing with other people.  
  
She tried to turn the kiss into something more serious, only for Makoto to turn his head at the exact wrong way, at the exact wrong time resulting in them knocking their teeth together. Mukuro pulled her head back covering her mouth. She had been so confident a second ago too.  
  
Between her fingers the words trickled out in murmurs. “Do you think I’m cute…?”  
  
“Yep, you’re cute.” Makoto said staring back up at her, star struck. To have such a starry look in his eyes over her, Mukuro could only assume he had never seen any other stars in the night sky before. She would pale in comparison to anything else.  
  
He lay there with his arms spread out wide on the ground. In between them were several layers of robes. Makoto’s robes had become slightly disheveled to the point that his bare collarbone was now exposed, which Mukuro was now intensely staring at. She had crawled on top of him and sat just over his hips, but even then that oblivious dork of a boy did not seem to get what was going on. Perhaps he thought she meant only kissing. She could not blame him for assuming that when she had done such a poor and clumsy job of their first kiss.

She scooted off of him for a moment and drew her knees up thinking. Negotiation was her weak point, so she tried to think what she was feeling right now and put it into words. _I need you! I really do! I love you! I love you! I love you! Loving you! Make love to me!_ That did not work. “Oh, really…. Hold on! Why did I ask that question? Umm… well.. Er, but…”  
  
As she did that, Makoto got on his knees once more and crawled over to her side. He moved on his out. Turned out, there were moments where he was not such a shy boy after all. He reached forward and tapped on the side of her face, as if wanting to be let in. That was right, as a person she was incredibly closed off, her world was incredibly small compared to others, but still she would like him to see i it. At that moment with him sitting next to her she crossed the small gap between them reaching for him.This time her hands went to his neck. In an instant the several times she had broken somebody’s neck so easily and watched life drip away and fall through the cracks between these fingers occurred to her and she hesitated. Then Makoto kept looking at her still, the same puppy like expression in her eyes. Even though he knew she was a killer, he did not seem to distrust her hands getting this close to him even for a second. That gave her the confidence, to stroke his cheek then the line of his face with her thumb and then tilt his head back this time lining his face up with hers perfectly.

That time, the shapes of their faces, the curves, individual nooks and crannies seemed to fit together. The last thing she saw of his approaching face was his cheeks turning red before her eyes closed. Just from kissing, he had gone the full tomato, he really was a shy boy.  
  
She was supposed to be a shy girl, but she was also a wolf. She only knew how to sink her teeth into things. This was probably the wrong time, and probably the wrong place, and she only knew half of what she was doing, but she wanted it anyway. A girl who only knew how to kill, a girl whose only place was out on the battlefield, she wanted to be more than that for just one night. Even though corpse was in her name, she wanted to feel like a real live person. Just one night would be enough for her she thought.  
  
Because it was enough for her that Kumagawa offered his hand to her one more time, no matter how many times she bit it. It was enough for her to hear Junko called her sister. Even though she was a wolf, she was used to just licking what little meat was still attached to the scraps of bones she was thrown.  
  
She pressed her thumb harder against his cheekbones and then drew back for air. As Makoto’s eyes fluttered open, his long girlish eyelashes obscuring the blur his eyes became. They were green, a normal boy’s eyes, perhaps a pair of eyes that could be swapped out or any other set of eyes in the world, but from the soft way he looked at her they were unmistakably his.

His eyes now open too noticed that her freckles too were painted with red. The only sign of emotion on her still as always face. A cool looking expression detached from everyone and anything. The more Makoto saw it, the more he wanted to pull her closer and warm her up, he longed to give her some point of attachment. Something to hold onto. But he was dim witted, slow on the uptake, he did not realize the something she wanted to hold was himself, or even her true intentions in this moment.  
  
He was that kind of person and she knew it, not able to act until she was pushed, so she pushed their lips together once more. Makoto was just as inexperienced as she was, but she could already tell that he was trying harder, he wanted to please her. Clusmy as it was, their lips kept missing each other just a little bit, their heads kept having to tilt, adjust, Mukuro let go of Makoto’s shoulders to balance by placing her hand on the ground instead. Even so, as she moved closer to him, he slipped and fell back dragging her with him. His robes fell to the side, revealing his bare chest, so skinny his ribs were showing.  
  
Her lips landed a few centimetres from his face. For a moemnt they were so close it was like they were breathing the same breath. How to make it obvious she wantd more than just kissing, the wolf pondered for a moment looking at the one in front of her as innocent as a lamb. She backed away from him for a moment and straightened up. Her hands traveled to her robes, these things were in the way.  
  
She had been living for so long only fulfilling Junko’s desires, giving her everything to them, but nothing came of it. Her world was barren, dry, cracked, like a long dead battlefield. Mukuro could only imagine herself, staring from the top of the hill, fallen weapons marking the graves of fallen people. She had no right at all to complain about living in such a dying world, she was the one who cut it off, and killed it in the first place.  
  
Yet, just by chance, even though she did not deserve it she had found a single flower on the battlefield. A crack appeared in the glass of her world, and glancing through it she saw a boy smile at her. She gave him no reason to smile at all, and yet still he showed her such a kind face.  
  
She could never imagine herself with a heartfelt smile - the kind of smile Makoto flashed her so easily. That had been a smile that seemed to love the whole world. How could someone who seemed so ordinary, so tiny and small, wear such a smile? She wondered again and again but had not come up with an answer for herself. Did she even have a right to smile in the first place?  
  
Slowly turning over such thoughts in her head over and over again, like the girl who only knew how to kill trying to attempt an unsolvable math problem with no result, she slowly came to desire. It was the first thing desired outside of her sister. Finally a desire of her own.  
  
Even though she was a cold and unfeeling girl. Even though he was a sensitive boy, with too many soft emotions. He always put everything aside, to show her that smile.

_“As if you could! A catatrophic disappointment like you? Upupupupu! That’s right, a disappointing, emotionless, un-ladylike and inhuman killing machine lke you! Naegi was the first person in our class to smile for you, remember”_

All of those things were true and yet she could not help herself. Encouraged by a devil with a kind smile, Kumagawa told her it was okay for desire. Even for people like them to desire. Empty people with nothing inside of them and nothing to give others.  
  
The moment she began to desire, she wanted it all to herself. The first thing that could be called her own, but Makoto was not a thing. A warm, living breathing person, and one she endangered by being around, one whose debts and kindness she could never repay. There was no helping it though, this first time feeling, she had no experience with it so she could not fight it either. She ran from the top of the hill to where she found the single flower on the battle field, took her gloves off and carefully dug for it with her hands, scooping it up she held it to her chest.

Clothes were getting in the way of what she wanted, so she let the top part of her robe fall off of her too thin and trembling shoulders. 

“W-w-w-wait, what are you doing?”

“We have to take our clothes off if we want to do it.” Even if she had no idea what she was doing, or if this was right, she was determined, at least one of them had to be. Keeping a cool face as always, inside her head she heard loud screaming for the first time as she saw Makoto’s bare chest exposed as well.

‘How do you even know about stuff like this?”  
  
“Kumagawa told me. We went to go buy porn together.”  
  
“This is taking wingmanning a step too far… you’re not supposed to imitate what you see in- that’s not healthy or rather-”  
  
“Do you want to stop in the middle of this and take a sex education class and then come back here. Maybe we can ask a teacher.”  
  
“You’re making fun of me! Since when did you become the snarky type! That senpai of yours is a bad influence.”  
  
“We don’t have to, but I want to…”  
  
“I just… I don’t get what you see in me. There’s nothing special in me particular. I know it’s not uncommon for high school kids to do this but I never even imagined… right now um…”  
  
“I want to be closer to you than anyone else… that’s why... “

 _She wanted to hold onto him?_ It did not take much longer for his foolish boy brain to compute. When she crossed her arms in front of her chest and turned away slightly he saw something on her back. He sat up once more and looked on her shoulder. There were scars, like someone had dragged a wolf’s claw three times across her back. Makoto who had been too flustered to make a single move before that point, worrying that this was wrong, or more importantly he would do the wrong thing and hurt her finally moved when he saw her scars.  
  
There had to be something he could do. Even someone small and insignificant like him, even if it was as small as slapping a bandaid on it, she had been hurt too much, and… someone like Mukuro probably would not even think she had been hurt. If she did realize how much she was hurting she would say she deserved it. That was why he wanted to give her a little comfort. Just as she turned away from him he reached for her, embracing her from behind and kissing the part of her shoulder where the scar reached its peak.  
  
He felt a shiver run through her, and could only see the corner of her eye as she glanced back. He kissed another and then trailed them down. When Mukuro started to giggle, Makoto stopped for a moment to join her. He did not think such a serious girl who always seemed to be carrying so much weight in her own, could laugh in such a light hearted and fluffy way. Joining her in his laughter, Makoto’s hold fell down her sides to be more relaxed, and they both fell over once more. He wondered how many times they had clumsily fallen over like this. Neither of them seemed to mind anymore, lustered, embarrassed, not knowing what they were doing, at least they were sharing all those things together.

They rolled over again and this time Mukuro carefully crawled on top of him. He straightened his back as he saw her, and moved his hand to her chest. His thumb brushed over the whole of her breast, and he leaned forward to kiss her on the chest the same way he had on her back. Mukuro rolled over and steadied herself, putting her hands the tatami mat. As she looked down though she did not see Tatami.  
  
The dry and arid world she was a part of, the world of an already dead battlefield had changed in front of her. Suddenly, from that lone flower, there was an entire field of flowers that bloomed around her. No that was not her world, no world she was a part of could ever be so full of life. It must have been Makoto’s world, she was getting just a tiny peek. She looked down and saw that both of their robes were halfway off at this moment, they were caught between a mess of folded clothes, and soon there would be nothing between them at all. Just the two of them together alone in the garden. There she could let him see all of herself.  
  
When she leaned forward to kiss him again, her vision got lost amongst the field of flowers. To the girl whose world was gray, barren and remote she had never seen so many colors at once. She thought this kind of move would be awkward, desperate, but all she could feel was the light and fluffy feeling of having those parts of her kissed and caressed. The parts she had shown nobody else, and barely even looked at herself.  An odd thing to remember at a time like this but she was not a weapon like a gun or a sword, she was a person in a body. A separate person from her sister, who could never become her sister no matter how many times she practiced her disguise. It’s not like this specific act made her realize it but… being so close to another body, trying to put them together, you realized what an awkward and distinct things bodies were. Only when they were about to overlap did it become clear how different they were.  
  
But that was okay too. If they were the same person, they could not clumsily attempt to hold each other like this. She would not be able to hear Makoto’s cute giggles every tie his hands slipped, or he felt like he turned the wrong way to try to cover up his embarrassment. Small giggles, between heavy breathing.  
  
Aligning her hips with his she moved them together past the point of no return. FOr a moment her vision blurred again, but she continued on keeping in rhythm. To continue to see the flowers, to feel soft things like their petals brushing up against her, to be warmed by a soft light was all she wanted. If only for a few minutes that was fine, that was enough for her.  
  
Because she could die tomorrow, because she had no idea why a person like her was allowed to still live, she wanted to live in this moment. Perhaps it would be enough for her. Even a useless disappointment like her, something not even worthy of being called a doll like her sister, could have lived too. To have someone look at all of her just once.

That would be enough maybe… even if she were to disappear tomorrow, die like she ought to, she will have always been a part of Makoto’s world from this point forward. His world was so much more colorful than hers, there were so many living parts, so much movement. Makoto saw himself as small and insignificant but she just knew he had lived far more of a life than she had. In this small garden were flowers blown in from all over the world, planted their from people he met, he was sure every time he touched a new person a new flower sprouted. Some of the seeds must have blown in by chance, some of them were probably never meant to grow and the fact that they did made it all the more amazing.  
  
To be kissed by the wind, by the petals, all over, and touched in soft ways she was not used to. Then suddenly, there was too much for her to feel at once. It felt like too much, more than she had ever felt before, everything had dulled for her even pain, and she was so distant from everything.  
  
In that instant she remembered a scene from the past. One day in spring she had been dragged to this school by her sister and told to play the rule of an unassuming student. She did not even protest, because she thought it was natural all things that had to do with school were a waste of time for her, part of another world entirely separate from her. SHe never thought she could bridge the gap so she never bothered to try.  
  
She saw a boy ahead of her even though he was a nobody all things considered, just a lucky student here by a raffle was already laughing with a few of the students. He did not belong just like she did, os why was he so warm he was a part of the atmosphere, why was the sun shining on him.

Then a few weeks later when the last cherry blossoms were being blown off the tree, despite her not saying a single word to him, that boy turned and smiled to her. He had given her so much with that small acknowledgement. Because nobody looked at her before, because she was not a person worth looking at.  
  
And so over time, she had started to gaze at him, and she thought their entire relationship would be contained within those moments. She would only ever be a classmate, watching him from afar. She would never even tell him how happy it made her to be accepted as one of his classmates. She thought that was enough too, that he would always be distant, apart of some distant world, like a sunbeam through a window, or like the happy scenes she saw depicted on paintings in her dreams.

Then suddenly the boy who had turned to her was no longer a scene to be watched from a distance, That boy was by her side. Close enough to touch. Like she had been painted into the scene of the paintings she always gazed at. She was not separate from them, she had been carefully colored into the center of the scene.  
  
Everything, the flowers, the petals falling from above, the sun’s warmth trailing down the slope of her body, the breath of the wind against her skin, she was a part of all of the elements of this scene, and she was composed of the colors. When she looked around her she realized her feelings had heightened os much, become so vivid that the borders of lines using to sketch out the world were becoming more and more blurred, the lines between her and Makoto especially had been overlapped, the colors ell outside the lines. The entire world became an impressionist painting, things did not need to be distinct, just feelings that overflowed without border and roughly spilled out onto the canvas making a mess and making a distinct image at the same time just one you had to feel out.  
  
Mukuro’s hazy sense of the world only came back when she felt the slight fall of rain on her cheeks. Her eyes opened again, starin through the heat haze to see Makoto’s face.  
  
“Uh-ahh… oh… sorry… I’m sorry… did it hurt… I’m so…”

“Huh…” That boy blinked, tears falling off his long eyelashes. “N-no… I was happy, so happy so I…” He tried to wipe the tears away, but Mukuro merely locked her arms behind his head and pulled him into her hest. That little by somehow had so many emotions flowing through him. She had no idea how or why, such a thing ould be possible, how one person could be so many things, so many colors, connected to so many people at once. Makoto saw himself as insignificant, but Mukuro saw the opposite. 

Even with tears falling fro his face like that, he was able to still giggle as he had before. “Lame huh... “  
  
“No, it’s not.”  
  
Not a single part of him was insignificant. She thought every part of this boy’s life was far more important than anyone would ever realize. Makoto’s world was so large, so well connected, composed of so many feelings, and that she was just one part of it for only a moment,  
  
She wanted that to be enough.  
  
“I wish I could cry like that. You’re so… you… always…”  
  
“I’m so me? I’m not sure what that means but…Mukuro I know you can cry, your heart is no different from anybody else’s, I’ll show you, I’ll make you cry.”  
  
“Is that really a good thing to say to a girl?”  
  
“Ah, I’m sorry!”  
  
“Don’t apologize. Not a single thing about you is… everything is so…”

It would not be enough, Mukuro realized as she held him. Every second that passed, she would want a second more. She thought she would only be there for a moment, but that was wrong. Something had changed, it could not simply return to its previous state of being once their bodies crossed that line. It was not even sex, it was just a matter of closeness, neither of them had been this close to anyone as an individual before. Liking everyone and liking no one, could be done from the same distance.

Makoto’s colorful world full of life, Mukuro’s dull world empty of anything, she thought their worlds would remain separate, untouched, that they could only dwell for a moment before returning, but they had made a mess of things. Flowers had been torn out of Makoto’s garden revealing the dry earth, flowers had been transplanted into Mukuro’s world bringing color to it. Even if that would only wound Makoto’s world, even if Mukuro’s world would only choke out any flowers that had been planted there.

The fact that it had happened, the fact that they had lived and breathed together in that moment was a point neither of the could return from. All they could do was take hand in hand and walk forward, even if it meant leaving the soft and warm corona of the garden for uncertainty.  
  
That night they fell asleep tangled up in one another, forgetting for a moment where one ended and the other began, forgetting even who they were yesterday. It would probably hurt a lot more now that Mukuro was no longer numb, and cold to the entire world, but at the same time she could never bring herself to relinquish this warmth nw that she had it.  
  
Even now in the present day far off from that first night, when a sun beam fell on Mukuro’s face and warmed her enough to wake her up, she mistakenly thought it was Makoto for a moment. The two were interchangeable for her, and having to choose between the two she would rather be nocturnal.  
  
“Huh…?” Makoto blinked in the seat next to her as Mukuro suddenly raised her head. “Were you dreaming about something?”  
  
“N-no, nothing!” The contents of her dream quickly flashed past her eyes again, causing he face to redden. “Jeez I just woke up at the good part too.”  
  
“What good part?”  
  
“Nothing!”

“Oh well, I’m sorry for waking you up but your phone kept buzzing.”  
  
“That’s just Junko. She’s texted me about five hundred times since I left two days ago, god she’s clingy.”  
  
Makoto felt like changing the subject to something other than Junko. “It’s unlike you to suddenly get shy.”  
  
“I’m a shy and cute girl underneath it all. If we’re both the shy one though we would never get anywhere.”

“I’m not shy! I can be bold when I want to be… when the moment calls for it… when I’m pushed up against a wall and forced into it… wait why do I keep making myself sound worse here.”

“Makoto, you’re cute.”  
  
“Oh, r-really, do you think so?” For a moment he brushed his long girlish fingers through his spiky hair, half covering his reddened face.  
  
“Makoto do you want to hold hands?”  
  
“What… really? In public like this... “  
  
“We’re the only ones on this plane.”

They were currently traveling by private plane (owned by the Kurokami Foundation, they asked Togami first to borrow one but he would not agree unless Makoto agreed to be his secretary for life so they asked Maguro instead) to the Hope’s Peak expansion branch that was built by Munakata Kyosuke but never came into use due to the continued trouble at the original school.  
  
“Is that what you think I am… Am I shy? Is that what stops me from acting on my own, or am I just using my shyness as an excuse…” Makoto had been uncharacteristically silent the whole trip, and talked to himself more than she ever saw before.

“It’s rare to see you think about yourself this much.”  
  
“Hey, it’s not like I’m just thinking about myself, I’m thinking about a lot of other things as well, like how my actions affect other people, how they see me, I have to think about this stuff real hard so I don’t make the same mistakes again.” Makoto hated the idea of thinking about himself too much, he seemed to loathe any kind of self importance for a non-special person like himself.  
  
“It’s rare to see you think.”  
  
“W-w-wha? Am I really just some idiot who gets lucky to you? Since when did you start thinking that?”

Mukuro replied with no hesitation at all. “I’ve always thought you were an idiot.”  
  
“You really do have no mercy.” Makoto was always stumbling over his own words, trying to phrase things in the most diplomatic way as to never hurt anybody, so Mukuro’s direct style of speaking always clashed harshly against his. “You’re really amazing for just saying what you think like that.”  
  
“Um… I can never think of nice and pretty things to say like you so… Makoto even if you’re an idiot you’re an empathy idiot, you’ve always run on pure emotion like that. The people like Munakata and Shuichi who insist you don’t mean what you say probably just don’t understand the sentiment behind your words… because they can’t think on pure emotion like you can so it’s… hard for them to understand.”  
  
“So they’re just saying stuff to mess with my head?”  
  
“Maybe but… but it’s more like, well I’m bad at understanding others so I think it’s hard to understand people and the way they see the world in general, you’re always going to end up assuming people start off thinking about things the same way you do. And motions are scary, they’re irrational, and move in unpredictable ways, and if someone’s feeling a very strong emotion you can’t always explain it away or understand it through logic alone.”  
  
Getting emotional without thinking, unable to be moved by logic once he was driven by his emotions, the empathy idiot, he was sure Mukuro meant it in a good way but he could not help but feel discouraged.  
  
He had been trying so hard to take responsibility and change lately. Yet, the others around him simply kept smiling at him and saying over again _the same old Makoto,_ and _that’s what makes you so great Makoto, you never change.  
_  
He felt like he was tricking them all into being friends with him, doing exactly as Munakata said he did and stringing them along with empty platitudes that he simply lacked any kind of means to fulfill. Makoto was scared of getting too self important, terrified of it, because he did not want to be making friends simply for the sake of himself. _Surrounding myself with friends because I’m worthless without other people around me, because I want to borrow their strength… not it can’t be that, I really care about people. I do. I want to be with them because we’re happy together._

There were so many more complicated people around him, dealing with more complicated aspects of life than he had ever been forced to deal with. He had no idea how to start even processing them, and it just made him feel even more the hapless fool who gets dragged through his journey.  
  
“Makoto, they just don’t get it, when you say those things you mean it because you’re you.” Mukuro said, interrupting his thoughts. “You really mean them, the sentiment behind them is so strong with all of your heart, that’s how you feel everything.”  
  
She really did seem to know him. However that admiration she held for him too, felt like something he did not earn. _Because you’re you._ It seemed so simple, but it was like he was an idiot who had forgotten. Now drowning in his own suddenly self acquired self awareness, the more he thought about himself the more he seemed to lose it. _I just have to be me, that’s what everyone wants me to be, that’s the person they put all their hope in, but whose me again?_

Before he could think any further of it, Mukuro grabbed him by the hand and pulled him out of his seat. Makoto tilted his head to the side. “Huh? Is it time to get off. The plane hasn’t even landed yet.”  
  
“We’re getting off here.”  
  
“But we’re in the middle of the air, how-”  
  
Mukuro thought something along the lines of _he’ll figure it out_ as she tugged him forward. A moment later when she was preparing a parachute, Makoto was having his usual case of nerves.  
  
“How can you be so calm about this?”  
  
“It’s just parachuting. It’s no big deal. Parachuting into an unknown battlefield is not nearly as scary as walking into the battlefield of school every morning.”  
  
“I beg to diiiiiiiifeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr!” Makoto started to complain, but his words were lost as they fell together.

 

😈

 

When the two of them landed on the roof, it took quite a long time, (some of it spent waiting for Makoto to calm down) before they could find Kirigiri inside of the building. It was strange, despite being being built like a school it hardly resembled a school at all, just a research facility. Of course Mukuro was always aware of that from the beginning, how Hope’s Peak planned to use its students, that its interest in raising and nurturing them was only a pretense. It was what made Junko want to target such an academy in the first place.  
  
She used a portion of the Hope’s Peak symbol in Monokuma’s red eye. As if to say the greatest despair sprung from the greatest hope. Her sister really was that pretentious, ugh how annoying. She had heard her say so many times that it was their own fault for building themselves up higher and higher on their reputation for spreading hope, and because of that the higher they built themselves the more their shadow lengthened.  
  
If Mukuro had it her way, she would be the only one dealing with the shadows. If she could stay in the shadows and Makoto could stay in the light, that would be for the best in her mind. Even if it meant fighting all alone she would be fine with it, as long as Makoto could stay Makoto, keep going to school, and keep loving the academy he loved.

Walking by his side as Mukuro remembered what she and Junko almost did, she shuddered with self disgust once again. If they had gone through with their plans to live in the bunker, not only would they have shut Makoto and the others up in yet another beautiful coffin, but that school that Makoto loved so much would be permanently stained for him. He would have never been able to stop associating it with a coffin.  
  
The thought of burying Makoto was just too much for her. As she saw the image flash before her eyes of her and Makoto in that coffin together, she wanted to shut them and look away from the whole world, but she forced herself to keep walking. Because Makoto was trying to deal with his own issues, trying to figure out himself for the first time now and he had been so strong for her in the past and put his own needs aside so many times that she wanted to do the same for him.  
  
When they finally caught up with Kirigiri, they were both surprised she looked entirely unharmed. Not only that, but Shuichi was right by her side. The Shuichi that they had talked to over and over again the past few weeks was nowhere to be found, and he was his normal, over eager to impress Kirigiri self. In act in a room with two large bookcases and classical decor she looked like she was being interrupted in the middle of a classical scene that could be found in any detective novel.

Kirigiri turned her head to the side. “What…? I didn’t call you here. This an important investigation, shoo, shoo, there’ll be time to hang out at school when I get back.”  
  
Makoto’s face fell. “It feels like she’s shooing out the clowns.”  
  
It was Mukuro who spoke up. “Kirigiri-san wait… Shuichi was the one who came to get us.”  
  
It was only then Kirigiri looked up from the book case she had been scrutinizing. “What are you talking about, Shuichi-kun has been here the entire time.”

“Ummm… Kirigiri-senpai are you guys talking about me when I’m right here again…” Quietly, the timid looking boy reached for the brim of his hat and pulled it over one of his eyes. “I did text my senpai though and ask them for their help.”  
  
“That was unnecessary.” Kirigiri said, quick and decisive and yet cold.  
  
“They’re your friends. Even before when you were investigating you weren’t doing it alone, I was here.”  
  
“You’re unnecessary.”  
  
“Kirigiri-senpai!” Shuichi whined.

It seemed the two of them were back to their usual routine. Mukuro wondered for a moment if it had been some kind of mistake, if they had miscast the role Shuichi was supposed to play in this tragicomedy.  
  
“You shouldn’t hold it in. You should just tell them what’s going on. Sometimes asking for help is exactly what you need. Even if it’s something small.” Shuichi said, lifting his hat again so he could look at her with both eyes, an extremely vulnerable and honest face, disarming in the exact same way Makoto’s puppy dog eyes always were. Of course unlike Makoto, Shuichi immediately ruined it with his usual insecurity. “Ah, but…. I might be getting a little too much help considering I’m always relying on you Kirigiri-senpai.”  
  
Kirigiri brushed a hand through her hair turning her face away from everyone present. “I never meant to hold it in… That was never my intention. When you involve yourself in someone else’s business, you can easily misjudge them.” Kirigiri was clear spoken as always, but her words were passive aggressive. The cold stare she gave back at the other three seemed to say _read between the lines, you’ve all misjudged me._  
  
Perhaps the real trap they thought they were walking into all along was how mad Kirigiri who always insisted on working alone would get at them when she learned they had charged in blindly here to save her.  
  
“I’m sure you’re right. There are certainly situations like that… this seems like one big misunderstanding.” Shuichi next to her gently tried to persaude her. “But, aren’t there times that make you think… you want to really trust someone? Aren’t Mukuro and Makoto like that to you, you want to trust them even if you might get hurt? So, I think we can tell them what’s going on.”  
  
“You phrase it as if I’m already going to agree.” Kyoko dropped her fingers from her hair to glare at him.

Shuichi took an entire step back grabbing his own shoulder as if Kyoko’s glare had literally cut through a part of him. “Ah, s-sorry.”  
  
“I’m not mad… What makes you think I’m mad.”  
  
“It’s k-kind of hard to tell when you use the same voice for everything.” Shuichi stuttered after her. He was trying hard at the moment, it would hurt Kirigiri’s feeling even worse if she thought he was afraid of her, no he was just afraid of everything not her in particular.  
  
“Oh, I know that feeling.” Mukuro muttered behind them in a monotone voice.”  
  
Kirigiri touched her knuckles to her chin, relaxing slightly as she closed her eyes. “Thank you for your consideration, and thank you for coming her even though it’s unnecessary. You two are always doing unnecessary things, I don’t understand.”

She changed the subject abruptly.  
  
“Shuichi-kun and I were investigating the disappearance of Mitarai-kun. Several months ago, around the time we first entered Jabberwock, the group that Sukinasaki-san leads that had hired him as a manager filed a missing person’s report.”  
  
At that Mukuro immediately bowed so much her upper body  was horizontal. “I’m sorry. That’s probably my fault, Mitarai-kun wasn’t only the ultimate animator. Junko was using him to experiment with mind control for some time and I helped with that.”  
  
“It’s probably not your fault this time. When Mitarai-kun went missing, several weeks worth of security footage from Hope’s Peak archives also went missing, it wasn’t made into nothing by Kumagawa - I’m still annoyed he can do that - it was physically stolen.”  
  
“That might also be my fault Junko and I recorded security footage of the student council killing each other in the first killing game specifically to use the stimulation in a despair inducing brainwashing video. The ultimate goal was to develop a video that would convince the user to commit suicide against their will from seeing it.”  
  
Kirigiri paused for a moment. She was astounded by how honest Mukuro was even now when faced with a defender of justice that she wanted to remain friends with. She was so unlike her sister though, who would only lie and make excuses at a moment like this. “Is there anything Junko wasn’t behind?”  
  
“Do you remember when Makoto tripped and lost the school relay for us. That wasn’t us, he just tripped on a rock.”  
  
At her side Makoto whined. “Why did you have to bring up that specific example?”  
  
“That’s Makoto for you, even when he’s falling he looks super cute.” Mukuro said, touching a hand to her cheek.  
  
“Umm… thanks.. But I don’t think that’s praiseworthy.”  
  
“Anyway as I was saying, we were investigating and suddenly we hit a dead end, which is probably why Shuichi-kun called for help. He thinks if you two are here this will somehow go better.”  
  
“Dead end… did something happen? Did the investigation run dry? Did somebody cover up evidence?” Mukuro asid, even her emotionless voice seemed to shake a bit out of concern for her friend.

“No um…” Kirigiri’s fingers found her hair again. She almost looked embarrassed, which shocked both Makoto and Mukuro. Kirigiri to them always said exactly what she needed to say, and seemed to always have the right emotions for the moment. “You see, um… how do I put this. How does one investigate?”  
  
“What?” Makoto repeated.  
  
“What is a detective again?”

“What a philosophical question.” Makoto tried to sound smart.  
  
“No I mean. How do… How do detective? How do I detective? How do I do the detective thing?”  
  
Kyoko’s eyes looked lost. As if she had lost sight of the entirety of herself.  
  
“You… forgot your talent?” Makoto repeated again in disbelief.  
  
Mukuro immediately bowed again. “I’m sorry, that might also be Junko’s fault. That was her plan for you in the original killing game, to erase your talent through erasing your memories.”  
  
At that moment Kirigiri touched her forehead in exasperation. Which is precisely .5 Hinata’s on the exasperation scale, which was such an emotional display for Kirigiri she might as well have screamed at the top of her lungs. “How can Junko be behind everything? She’s just one girl.”  
  
At that, Mukuro bowed her head again in yet another apology. “Actually… there might be more than one Junko now, not counting Alter Ego.”  
  
“Are you serious?” Kyoko’s brow twitched. So much display of emotion she might as well have picked up the bookcase and threw it in frustration.  
  
She was serious. This was a tragicomedy after all, half serious and half comedic. That kind of terrible confusion of tone where the events seemed stitched together between happiness and sadness with no congruity to only further make everything seem absurd.

And in tragicomic timing just as they got to the root of the matter a book case really was thrown. The one near the door came flying at them, and Mukuro reacted first diving to push Shuichi out of the way, while Makoto was saved by tripping over his own shoe laces at the most convenient time.Kirigiri simply did not move keeping her calm as she let the broken pieces of debris fly past her.  
  
The book case nearest the door had been cut in half by a sword and then thrown. Standing behind it in the doorway, was a man in a silver suit, and the much taller man in a fur jacket that was always by his side.

“Did you really think you could avoid me by fleeing to the place that I built, Naegi Makoto? You might be the living definition of the word foolhardy. Did you really think blind luck would get you this far?”

“Don’t make fun of him he’s been sensitive about that lately.” Mukuro said as she rose up from the floor, standing in front of Shuichi protectively still.  
  
“Wait, what’s happening…” Kirigiri the detective did not like being left behind, a common theme in her life recently.  
  
“I might have sort of become a fugitive to hope’s peak.” Nervously, Makoto scratched at his spiky hair, he sounded more embarrassed of disappointing her then he did scared his life was in danger.  
  
“Is that Junko’s fault somehow too?” Kirigiri just sounded annoyed at this point.  
  
“No, it’s mine. I’m so-” Her apology was interrupted by Munakata drawing his sword and leveling it at her face, making it possible to throw her head down again.  
  
“Mukuro, run!” Makoto instructed.  
  
While she may not have valued her own life, she could not possibly hurt Makoto by dying in front of him again. She grabbed Shuichi by the hand and took off running in one direction. At the same time, Makoto grabbed Kirigir by her gloved hand and took off running in the opposite.  
  
Munkata sheathed his sword again and looked back at Juzo, wordlessly communicating with him. Munakata trusted him completely to watch his back, but that trust only made Juzo feel worse. At this point everybody else in the world was more qualified than Juzo to do that, but… all he could do was throw himself endlessly into the next task.  
  
Every failure, every disappointment, that became more weight to hold all on his own. Yet he still thought he could make it up to Munakata. This time he would be strong. This time he would be worthy of the faith Munakata put in him. He would stop being a disappointment eventually, he was sure he could make it all up to him. It only got heavier and heavier but what right did he have to bitch about that, he was supposed to be strong after all.

😈

 

Mukuro knew about it, bits and pieces of the future which was going to be erased. The plan was to lock them all away in the old school building which had been turned into a shelter and agree to spend the rest of their lives inside of it (Junko voice: Haha, get it they’re going to spend the rest of their lives their, because they’ll all murder each other. God, she was annoying). At the same time though when Junko locked the others away she was locking herself as well.

Mukuro knew her sister was always unstable, but she wondered if that year interacting with everybody else in the school and being forced to put up with the boring and annoying parts of a daily student life had affected her sister any. Her sister probably grew fond of that class in her own way, fond enough to kill them. (One again, so annoying. Why is she like that?)  
  
Therefore being separated from them and locked away in a coffin within a coin would probably only make her sister worse. If Junko separated herself from everybody that long and played the mastermind all day long, all traces of her sister that remained might disappear entirely. But that might be what Junko wanted in the first place. After all she only initiated the killing game plan, and converted the old school building into a coffin so she could have her plan foiled and enjoy the beautiful despair of dying at the end of it.  
  
That plan had been derailed but Mukuro could not help but thinking about it, especially when someone else seemed to try to be enacting the plan they left behind for her. Junko seemed happy back then, unbelievably happy that her plan for despair would come to fruition, but she did not seem alive. Now, in the current day she seemed very unhappy that everything had been thrown off and she was getting dragged along with Kumagawa, but for the first time it seemed like she was living.  
  
Was that really the only two options? To die in such a beautiful perfect casket, or to live miserably on even if there was no reason at all.  
  
Mukuro’s thoughts while running down the hallway were interrupted when Shuichi suddenly let go of her hand and stopped.  
  
“You’re suspicious of me aren’t you? So why did you save me like that… or were you just doing what you think that fool would do.”

Shuichi covered one of his eyes with the brim of his hat again.  
  
Mukuro turned on her heel, and turned slowly to face him. “So you were just acting good in front of Kirigiri-san.”  
  
“Just like you always pretend to be more like him when you’re in front of Naegi-senpai, you wolf in sheep’s clothing.” A half smile played on his lips. “You’re more suspicious of everyone than he is, you must have noticed our stories don’t align. You’re capable of doing things Makoto isn’t, you could threaten me, torture me for his sake, because your hands are already bloody.”  
  
“Shuuichi-kun, you would be hurt…”  
  
“That doesn’t matter. You should do anything to pursue the truth. Unlike when we’re in a killing game, there are things you can achieve here with power alone. Nobody would fault you for relying on power when it’s all you’re good for… when you can do what Makoto can’t.”

As Shuichi’s shadow extended from him, Mukuro saw the same half smile and one eyed look appear in his shadow. She was struck by the feeling of something terribly familiar, something she knew better than anybody else.  
  
Instead of taking him up on his offer however, she dove forward and knocked him out of the way again when a chair was thrown in their direction. Sakakura Juzo appeared in the hallway, having caught up in the time they took to talk.  
  
“Principal’s office. Now.”

As Mukuro picked herself up off the ground and stood between him and Shuichi, she was faced with yet another person that she and Junko had conspired together to hurt. Mukuro reached underneath her skirt and easily drew a knife.  
  
Shuichi was right, she could easily win this fight with strength. She did not want to do as she did last time and simply watch as Makoto got pummeled in front of her. She could use this strength she had killed, killed, and killed again her whole life to acquire to do something good for once, to protect.

Yet, she knew the only reason Juzo was so dedicated to hunting them down was because what she and Junko had done to him. She could not forget about that simply because she wanted to protect Makoto in the moment, because she knew Makoto would care about the feelings even of a person trying to kill him.

Mukuro could not let herself be beaten up again, but she could not simply solve things with fighting either. She hoped she did not disappoint Kumagawa by saying it was not as easy as it seemed in shonen manga.

“I’m sorry Sakakura, I know the right thing to do is surrender but I can’t… my life is worthless but… I’m not alone, if I were to go down here I’d be dragging others with me.”  
  
“What a speech, that Naegi must be rubbing off on you. You really think it’s right to ignore the principal, you some kind of truant?”  
  
“Yes, I’ve started to go through my rebellious phase.” Mukruo said in a dry voice. “I’m sorry about that.”

At that, Juzo picked up another desk and threw it at her. Mukuro dodged it moving on instinct alone, like she was a part of the wind. Rather than take advantage of the opening to attack she held back. If it was just a fist fight Jzuo’s combat expertise were better than hers, but she had weapons on her. He was the type of opponent she would rather deal with from afar, just like Sakura but lately she had gotten more and more experience in hand to hand combat.

Besides, this was a person her lazy sister had beaten in hand to hand combat all on his own. If her sister who barely ever lifted a finger to fight could win, then she could as well. THen why was she hesitating to get any closer she wondered. “Aren’t you supposed to be a boxer?”  
  
“Using my fists on you would be a waste.” He broke the leg off a chair, and threw it the same way one would throw a crowbar.

Mukuro ducked under it, and sped up getting close enough to get in Juzo’s face. “Are you sure that’s the reason why you’re not fighting seriously?” She forced him to throw his fist to defend himself, then landed on the ground and in an instant jumped back with everything she had. Juzo culd only strike the spot she had been in a moment ago. “Do you really want to hunt down Makoto? I can understand your grudge against me but what does he have to do with it.”  
  
“Kid’s a traitor. If Munakata says so than it’s true.”  
  
“But um… what about what you think?”  
  
“I’m no good at thinking. This is all I’m good for.” He said as he took another swing at her, one Mukuro dodged with an acrobatic leap.  
  
If she was hit by a blow that powerful she would crumple, the beatings she had taken from the masked assailant, and Kagneui were already too much for her to handle. This was not a situation where she could just let herself take hits like Kumagawa either. “Are you sure about that?” She tapped her forehead. “You know my record don’t you? I bet you won’t even land a single blow on me.”  
  
That seemed to incite him. He came charging down the hallway to close the distance between them. The narrow hallway meant she could not dodge to the left or right, only keep retreating back, but eventually she would be driven back to where Shuichi was. Mukuro really did not want to say this, she had no right to say this but still it was the only way she thought she could break him. Perhaps Shuichi was right and all she could do was dirty her own hands to keep Makoto’s clean. “But if that’s the case, aren’t you a traitor too? Didn’t you lie to Munakata, just like Makoto did.”  
  
“...” Juzo stopped right then. “Yeah, that’s why I have to more than ever. I will eliminate anyone who gets in Munakata’s way. That was the vow I swore.”  
  
Mukuro saw it for a moment. Even though he was strong, strong enough to be called ultimate, stronger than anybody else he could not use that strength for the person he wanted to the most. No matter how many times he tried, he only kept failing Munakata over and over again, he was nothing more than a disappointment.  
  
Her moment of sympathy made her slower to dodge, and Juzo’s fist plowed right into her. She did not even get the chance to fall back, he grabbed her by the neck and slammed her against the wall holding his fist up again.

“Hey, Sakakura-san. You think you can make it up to Munakata, this time, this time, this time, right? It won’t matter, no matter how strong you are, no matter how much you protect him that won’t make up for what you did.”  
  
Makoto was right, empathy did hurt. Because she hesitated she probably was not going to get away now.  
  
“The hell do you know, kid?”  
  
“If Munakata fell to despair would you still follow him.”

“Munakata would never fall to despair. He’s not a hopeless screw up like me! I can’t do anything that’s why I have to make it up to him.”  
  
“Hey, listen… I am sorry you got blackmailed. That was my bad too. I have so many things to apologize over but you know, even if you had told Munakata the truth about Junko I don’t think it would have made a difference. Junko would have just come up with another plan to take Munakata down, so you’re not useless just because you made that choice.”  
  
“What are you saying? Just spit it out.”  
  
“Ah, right I’m sorry I’m not good at talking. What I wanted to say was, you were always useless.”  
  
That got her punched in the stomach.  
Mukuro spit blood right in his face, she felt bad about that because she really was not trying to be rude.  
  
When her coughing fit had stopped, she tried to speak in a ragged voice. “No matter what you do for him, you’re never going to make it up to him, he’s never going to see you. You’ll keep being a useless disappointment, because… you can’t do things for other people.”  
  
“I’m going to make it up to Munakata, what do you-”  
  
“ You can’t even bring yourself to speak up if you disagree with him. You’re so afraid that one mistake is going to make him cut all ties with you. If you think your connection is that weak, why are you loyal to him in the first place?”  
  
Juzo’s fingers which were tight against her neck, loosened a little bit.  
  
“Listen, in the past I did everything I could for my sister, but you saw how she turned out. No matter how much you do for someone, you can’t make them love you. It just happens all on its own.”  
  
Munakata’s hope was something that could save all of them. He was so much better than him. He would forgive him. The old Munakata was somebody he could tell anything too, and that was exactly why Juzo had stopped talking to him. That acceptance of his own weakness, would be too much for him to bear.  
  
If he could have told Munakata all along, then what was the point of suffering this secret for so long. If he could be forgiven that easily then why did he risk betraying the whole world in the first place. He did not want to let go, he wanted to keep being punished for what he had done. Even after Mukuro told him that she thought even if he had told Munakata the truth the result would be exactly the same.  
  
That was why Mukuro knew that Juzo was a better person, much better than her. He knew what Munakata was doing was wrong and could be convinced to speak up, because there was a softness inside of him that Mukuro did not have. He was not empty like she was.  
  
“Listen, Sakakura…” She said with mounting exhaustion in her voice. “You’re better than me, that’s why I know, that you know, that this is wrong. People can’t be saved by others, they just get saved all on their own. The reverse is true as well, people fall into despair all on their own. By putting Munakata on a pedestal like that, you’re just going to isolate him further, and make him lose himself, you’ll lose the person you want to protect in protecting them.”

“You’re going to say that after you and your little sister pulled that shit on me?”  
  
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I know. At the time I didn’t care what happened to you as long as my sister was protected. That’s why you should be better than me. Do you know why I love Makoto so much? It’s because he doesn’t just think about protecting his friends. He’ll want to save people he has nothing to do with either, and I think that’s what makes him strong. Anybody can say they want to protect their friends, your loved ones are just another part of yourself, it’s not reaching out that far. Even someone like Enoshima Junko can have loved ones. Makoto… and even Kumagawa… they’re weak in all other aspects but they have especially strong hearts, and that’s why they can even be moved to care about people that have nothing to do with them. And they’re just… opening themselves to getting hurt by that.”

Mukuro did not believe in anything. Not gods,not budhas, and not even her demonic younger sister anymore. She thought that, maybe, if she devoted herself to Makoto’s hope, she might be able to smile… only to realize that, as she did not believe in herself she had nothing to offer him. Try as she might she could not find anything inside of herself worth offering.  
  
She doubted what was happening right now was empathy, because that required something inside of herself. Not like Makoto did it anyway, that boy filled with so many things. Empathy required seeing some part of yourself in others, and there was nothing inside of her.  
  
Juzo let go of her finally, throwing a punch at the wall. “Damnit this is going to hurt.”  
  
“Yeah… I know. When I was a nobody, just soldier A on the battlefield with Fenrir, I was never hurt even once. Then I came to this school and could no longer be soldier A and my life became quite painful.”  
  
Juzo clutched at the side of his face to hide his eyes from her. “Munakata already thinks the whole world is against him, and I’m going to be the one who tells him even the two people he thought could always have his back are out to get him too.”  
  
“I’m sorry…” No matter how many times she apologized it would never be enough. “Relationships are quite painful. I would rather try to navigate literal minefields.”

Makoto had things to protect too, a normal family, a wonderful sister, a normal life, yet he had put a risk to all of that to get closer to her, yet he showed her that smile. He considered her feelings first even when she did not deserve it.  
  
That was why she started to realize, that there was no such thing as deserving or not doing enough to deserve love. Even disappointments like her could be loved.  
  
Juzo finally turned around. He made no eye contact as he left. “You better not move, because after I settle things with Munakata your ass is grass. It’s not like I care about you, I just don’t think Makoto deserves to get caught up in all of this.”  
  
Saying that, he left. Mukuro saw his back, it no longer looked strong like before, it was weak, shaking like hers did whenever she stood up to Junko, about to cave in but she thought that was for the best.  
  
His intensity as a human being, his strength was plummeting by the second.

😈 

 

A natural hero, Naegi Makoto.  
A natural villain, Enoshima Junko.  
A man made hero, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.  
A man made villain, Kumagawa Misogi.  
A man made something in between, Komaeda Nagito.

Makoto never considered himself a character in the tragicomedy to begin with, so he had no idea what his role was supposed to be, but wasn’t thinking of others in the terms of roles inherently dehumanizing?  
  
Even if he felt left behind he did not want to catch up with that kind of thinking. Kumagawa who always tried to protect him as a senpai in his own way even though he was suffering more than anybody else, considered himself a villain. He would touch Makoto’s face and say being the hero to his villain would make them closer than anybody else but Makoto could not take that.  
  
He did not want a friend of his calling himself a villain in the first place. Now was not the time to be lost in thought though, he could not believe he was such an idiot that he had to think over these things so long, that he was still doing it while running for his own life with Kirigiri.

“You’re rescuing me, how unlike you. I always thought you were the type to get rescued instead.”  
  
Kirigiri said from behind him.  
  
“Man how does everybody else know more about me than me… but you’re totally right.” Makoto stopped for a moment letting go of her to kick at the floor. “Well, still it’s not so bad being rescued that means a friend cared enough about you to come save you then?”  
  
“Or it means you’re just troubling them.”  
  
Kirigiri coldly dismissed him as always.  
  
“Well, if you were your normal self you could probably save us both from this so… I’ll help you remember.”  
  
“My normal self?”  
  
“Yeah, you’re always the responsible one. People say I’m a hero or something but that’s not true at all you were the one who always did all the work. If there was anybody who was a ‘main character’ i say that would be you. Ugh, whatever that even means. The meta talk has infected my brain.” Makoto stopped for a moment, hitting the side of his head. “Hey, Kiri you love being a detective but you never told me about it. How long have you been a detective anyway?”  
  
“How long…? Ever since I can remember. I came from a long line of detectives. Detective work is in my blood. There was a time when being a detective was considered a sacred duty. My family’s always seen it that way.”  
  
“Yeah, but I’m sure it’s not just your family. I’m sure you’re the one whose amazing.”  
  
“No, it’s not me. A detective is neither light nor shadow. We represent neither justice nor evil. That is how we can uncover the absolute truth. We stand neutral in all things. And to do that, we have to stand separate from the rest of society. It’s my source of pride.”  
  
“Pride…? I think you should be proud of yourself for being cool, but like, cool if you want to do all that light and shadow stuff you can do that too. Not that I understand it but you do you.”  
  
“Of course Makoto, I know that you very often don’t understand things but you still care.”  
  
“Hey! Jeez, I’m even getting this from my two closest friends. You and Togami.”  
  
“You were always getting insulted by Togami-kun, you just always seem to filter it out.”  
  
“Huh, what are you talking about?”  
  
“See.” Kirigiri put her hand in front of her face. “But you know, even I was willing to throw some of that pride aside. In order to enter Hope’s Peak, I had to reveal myself to the school. I did it knowing it was something a true Kirigiri detective would never do.”  
  
“But… why did you do that?”  
  
That was right she had never told him.  
She had lost the opportunity to do so a long time ago. “It’s because Kirigiri Jin, I wanted to see him again.”  
  
“Oh, you wanted to reconnect with your dad huh? I always thought it was weird that even though you he was your dad you guys never act like family around each other.”  
  
“Act like family…” She had no idea what that meant, she thought she did at one point for the grandfather who raised her and she was still grateful that he had done so, but now she felt like she owed him gratitude in the sense of a business transaction rather than feeling like that person was a home she could return to. “I had no desire to recconect with him, that’s why I haven’t done it.”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“I just wanted to sever all ties with him. That was my only goal. The last time I saw him, I was very young. I don’t remember much myself of the time he was around, but when my mother died he left the family. He went to my grandfather, and they had a huge argument. And young as I was… he left me behind.”  

“I’m sure he wanted to-”  
  
“No he didn’t. But you know for the longest time I didn’t even care. Because I prided myself as a detective, he didn’t even wound me. The only thing that botered me was how everybody else would look at me, like I was missing something, like I was incomplete, just because I didn’t have a family like everyone else did. I thought I was fine as long as I had pride as a detective.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You even like me better this way. The Kyoo who lives herlief purely as a detective. I wanted to keep living that way but you know… when I came to this academy I couldn’t bring myself to sever ties with my father. I didn’t start acting like his daughter again either. I just did nothing. For a whole year we didn’t talk about it.”  
  
“Well, you are the quiet type but that’s no good. You should talk about things, you’re way smarter than I am, and better with your words.”  
  
“So you say but… I thought the reason I didn’t want to talk was this pride of mine as a detective. That it was all I had… but you know, in the simulation when I was sleeping I dreamed about a life where I was never a detective, and right now I forgot all about my talent so… maybe it wasn’t even that important to me in the first place.”  
  
“Kiri…” His back was turned to her so he could not make out the expression on her face.  
  
“If that’s the case, what have I been doing all this time? I guess I was just pretending, so I would have something, because I did not want the people who looked at me to be right, that I was empty because I didn’t have a father or a mother.” She held her hand on her heart, but even that gesture only reminded her of her own hollowness. “Even though I’m supposed to be smart can I say something stupid for once? Something unbelievably stupid? I’m always listening to you say stupid things so I’m just going to say it.”  
  
“Hey…”  
  
“I’m jealous of Mukuro. Even though she has the worst sister in the whole world, literally, no exaggeration, she still loves her. She still has that family.”  
  
“I’m sorry Kiri…” Makoto scratched at his spiky hair. They had stopped running entirely, which was probably a bad idea, but Makoto thought finally talking was more important. “I don’t think you’re empty or anything, maybe you’re just shy. It’s hard to talk about your feeligns with a dad you haven’t seen in so long, right? And… I don’t think I can say anything good about this I’ll just sound like an idiot lecturing you who doesn’t know your pain because he already has two parents…”

  
Makoto had at least learned not to take his normal life for granted, seeing everybody around him who despite all their extraordinary talents, still wanted things like family, friends, things he had plenty of in his own life.  
  
“Can I ask you something dumb now too?”  
  
“That’s never stopped you before.”  
  
“Hey!” Makoto whined before looking her in the eye. Even if he did not know whether the things Shuichi said about him were true or false still, he did not want to be averting his eyes from things just because they were too complicated for his simple hope to work out. “Did you like me, like, like like me?”  
  
“Like like like I thought words were supposed to be your strong point, Naegi-kun.”  
  
“I’m serious! Kiri. Is it like the thing with your dad, did you start to like me, but were never able to say anything about it.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I think I’m a worthless guy so… when I thought people had feelings for me I just convinced myself that it couldn’t possibly be true, but I think that was just me avoiding the matter. Maybe Kumagawa was right to call me a harem protagonist, I think I’m afraid of hurting people so I just avoid anything that can hurt them.”  
  
“...”  
  
“This is all just assumed on my part, maybe it’s an ego trip… but I think if those are your feelings you shouldn’t avoid talking about them. Your feelings are important too, about your father, about me, even about Togami!”  
  
“Not about Togami.”  
  
“You’re not empty. You have tons of important feelings about things.”  
  
“Don’t be unreasonable. There are things I can and can’t do. I’m a human too.” Her finger flexed, and her gloved hand tightened.  
  
“You’re not human. You’re a detective. You pride yourself on always confronting the truth.”  
  
“Naegi-kun… you know the truth now, so please. Sympathize with me like you always do. You’re the only one who can…”  
  
“See. Right now, you want to be human, right? Even if your connection with your father is ambiguos and your mother is dead. Even if you grew up in a cold household, Even if you can't resolve things with your father, even if you push your friends away, listen despite all of that... You're... Still you. Circumstances don't determine that, your dad doesn't determine that,whether you have talent or not, whether you're a detetive or not. You'll always be Kirigiri. You'll be the Kirigiri I know, my friend. So of course I'll sympathize with you, but I'm not the only one who can."   
  
“So what, after learning all this you’re just going to tell me to do my best? To believe in the power of friendship? For the first time I think that optimism of yours is really annoying.”  
  
“Even if we had fallen in love and created a new family, that wouldn’t have fixed anything. I'm sorry I don't think I can fix that. But, I don't think you need to be fixed either."   
  
“...”  
  
“You didn’t forget you were a detective, don’t use that as an excuse. You forgot who you were. But, don’t worry, I’m your friend I’ll remind you. Don’t go acting like you know everything. Don’t go saying you’re empty. There’s still so much about yourself you don’t know. You can figure it out… but first, it’ll only happen if you talk to others.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Just say, “I don’t know everything. I only know what I know’ like usual. I’m sorry I can’t become a new family for you, I can’t save you either because you know… there’s a girl I love. Even though she’s done all the worst things in the world, she wants to keep going and try to atone. And I know I couldn’t do that. The reason I’m kind. The reason I’m able to empathize with others. It’s probably just because I have nothing going on in my own life, I was never hurt the way you and Mukuro were. But you and Mukuro are much stronger than me, you can keep going on with everything that you carry, that’s why I know you can remember who you are Kirigiri.”

“You’re fine with it, Naegi-kun?”  
  
“You don’t need it. You don’t need pride, or a father, or to be a detective you don’t need any of those things if they’re hurting you. You’ll still be Kirigiri without them.”  
  
“You’re fine if I’m no longer myself? I won’t be the Kirigiri that you admire as a hero anymore.”  
  
“No matter what, it’s all you. Even if you change, it’s you. Don't worry, I won’t spoil you. Turn rotten and I’ll hate you. Do bad things and I’ll scold you. If someone has in it for you, I’ll cover for you. Even though I’m weak and worthless, I’ll try to protect you. If you become stupid, I’ll help you with schoolwork. And if you cry, I’ll comfort you.”  
  
“You really are egotistical. Assuming you can do all those things for me, assuming you’re important to me. ”  
  
That was right.  
She had always wanted someone to do this for her.  
Because her flighty father left her, because her grandfather’s love was conditional on her talent.  
She wanted someone to always be there for her.  
A short sighted and childish wish.  
  
“You know, Naegi-kun. I really-”  
  
She had forgotten herself. She had fallen into some kind of trap and lost parts of her memories, but she felt like if Naegi was here, as long as he was she could rediscover herself.  
  
Before she even got the chance, suddenly she saw the flash of a sword in the corner of her eye. Kyosuke Munakata appeared suddenly.  
  
“Don’t rely on this one, he’s worthless like your father. He just wants talented people to acknowledge him so he can feel special, the moment you want to rely on him though he’ll run away.”

Before Kirigri could say anything back she saw Kyosuke moving forward. Makoto really was like a damsel in distress, he was always trying to protect others but he was the princess who needed to be protected. Kirigiri threw herself in front of him. The most illogical act possible, there were probably several other better ways to get through this situation.  
  
However, she did not feel a sword slice through her back. As at the last moment, Sakakura jumped in front of both of them instead. Munakata’s sword raked across his front, but he did not hesitate at all.  
  
“Sakakura, what is this?”  
  
“You gotta listen to me, Munakata. It doesn’t feel right hunting down this kid.”  
  
“He’s a traitor.”  
  
“Yeah, but he’s not the only one. I betrayed you too, are you going to kill me next?”  
  
“W...What…”  
  
A look of utter incomprehension spread across Munakata’s face.  
  
“Listen, I gotta tell you something. If you want to kill me afterwards then fine, but not until you listen to all of it. In the mean time let that kid go because… I can’t stand it. I can’t stand you trying to destroy someone who reminds you of yourself so much, I can’t stand watching you hate yourself… you’re hating… you’re hating a person I… I really… you know Munakata I really…”

Watching the scene from afar on the towers security cameras, Enoshima Junko was laughing. Not the real Enoshima of course, but yet another fake one. Junko C let’s call her. She flipped a picked up a button she was holding in her hand, and then pressed down on the red part.  
  
Suddenly, explosives that lined the floor of the room went off.  
The floor itself collapsed, taking Juzo, Munakata, Makoto, and Kirigiri with it.  
Makoto had been the closest to the hallway, just by sheer luck. He managed to catch himself, and saw Kirigiri hanging off of him.  
  
“Kiri that’s good, Climb up…”  
  
As he said that, his fingers weakened and he started to slip. Kirigiri knew that Makoto would never survive if she climbed up him. In an instant she made her decision, what she thought was the most logical decision.  
  
She let go and plummeted.  
  
“Kiriiiiiiiiiii!”  
  
Munakata sat on the opposite edge of the broken floor. He had only been saved because Juzo’s first instinct was to grab him and pull him up, letting go shortly afterwards. Munakata looked at Makoto for a moment, the man he was so dead set on hutning down a moment ago.  
  
Juzo had told him he was wrong about Makoto.  
Munakata’s fingers tightened around his sword. Rather than draw it at Makoto, he stabbed it into the floor, and used it to lower himself down.  
  
“Naegi, my dear boy. Let’s call a truce for this moment. I’ll go after them and you wait here. You could never agree with someone like Kirigiri throwing her life away for your sake right?”  
  
Makoto nodded. It was all he could do, words had deserted him in the moment.

“Perhaps you’re not so bad after all… I…Because I was so bent on chasing you down I almsot did that to Juzo.”  
  
Makoto could tell Munakata needed someone to talk to as well, but there were no words in his mouth. No such luck. A terrible thing for a helpless fool who only relied on luck to say. A moment later, Munakata disappeared, jumping down to see where both of them had landed.  
  
Makoto grabbed the sides of his head. All alone, only Shuichi’s words were there for him. “No wait… don’t go, Kiri you can’t go. You don’t understand, if my power is my connection to others then I’m completely worthless on my own. I need you guys around me.”  
  
He had denied Kirigiri was empty, because the empty one was him and he knew it.  
He had forgotten everybody, even Ikusaba being in the tower with him, his fear of being alone had heightened that much. All that little boy could do was hold himself and wait for the others to return to him.  
  
On the other side of the tower, Shuichi and Mukuro had finished walking. They saw someone waiting for them at the other end of the hallway, through a door that had been left open sitting at a security camera console.  
  
Mukuro saw her sister, Enoshima Junko.  
But not her sister.  
Somebody dressed up like her sister.  
  
Junko C smiled at her.  
  
“Hey, Hey, Ikusaba-san. Now that somebody’s stolen your role as Enoshima Junko’s double, who even are you anymore?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Ikusaba said, holding her arm in front of Shuichi protectiely and tilting her head. “But that’s a terrible wig. It’s tacky.”  
  
“It’s not a wig! This is my natural hair color! Ugh, I’m literally the only Enoshima Imitator that’s a natural blonde and I gotta put up with this.”

Ikusaba continued to look down at her.  
  
“That’s your natural hair color, I feel so sorry for you.”  
  
Even if she did not know who she was anymore, she had no choice but to act. Even people who did not know what they were, had a role to play in this tragicomedy, perhaps that was how they came to realize what their role was.  
  
Because she knew if Makoto were in this situation even if there was nothing he could do, he would do something.  
  
Makoto had left that impression in her heart.  
Unless you talk to somebody else, unless you see them, a story can never be told.  
That was why she kept talking, even though she had no good words to say.  
That was why she kept trying to atone, even though what she had done was unforgivable.  
That was what the lone wolf had decided.  
So finally, with a reason to.  
  
She smiled dangerously at the Fake Enoshima in front of her, ready for whatever would be thrown at her next. A smile that showed all of her canines and fangs.


	32. My Fated Person

First love.  
Even someone as terrible as him had that.  
Of course unlike the fairy tale like connotations first love usually depicts, this will only further highlight what a petty existence Komaeda Nagito is.  
And his terrible taste in men.

Ater a failed attempt at a bombing, Komaeda’s ‘discipline’ took the form of ordered psychiatry appointments with Miaya Gekkogahara and an ordered brain examination rom the super high school level neurologist Matsuda Yasuke.  
  
Komaeda had told this story many times in some form or another in the past. After a terrible accident which is your bad luck, your good luck comes in the form of a cute nurse who stands by your bedside gently taking care of you and nursing you back to health until you fall in love.  
  
That story was not entirely a lie, even if he himself sometimes lied and blurred the details when recalling it.  
  
Komaeda had successfully hidden his medical condition for almost several months before the bombing incident. Nobody paid attention to the lucky student who had no outstanding talents of their own to begin with, and just like every class he had been in before most classmates dismissed the symptoms of his condition as him being weird. It was easy to hide something when not a single person was looking to begin with.  
  
He was so good at it you could almost call it a talent, but haha he would never step on the toes of the talented by calling such a pathetic attribute of himself a talent.

“It surprises me you’re not friends with any of your classmates, Matsuda-kun. Class 77-A is as wonderful of a group of talents as 77-B, and Matsuda-kun shines so bright among them. Don’t you think there’s a lot you could learn from your fellow classmates, or do you think you’re better than them, that you shine brighter on your own?”

While he had several pieces of machinery hooked up to him, even suction cups on his head that he did not quite understand what they did he continued to babble. He had been in several hospital rooms like this before, all of them bright enough to blind, but this one was different somehow. Unlike the many doctors in the past who were back lit by the x rays they were showing of his brain so much so their faces were obscured, Komaeda could see Matsuda’s face just fine.  
  
Even as he rambled, and he saw Matsuda’s scowl worsen with annoyance, he could still see all of Matsuda’s face. No, Matsuda’s face was itself a light that shined brighter. All of those previous doctors, he could never remember their faces because they did not care about them, he was a lost cause to them. But that was not the case with Matsuda, his hope was one that would outshine all of those weaker hopes.

It was just a feeling that Komaeda had, from the moment he met him. Matsuda, no matter how cold he might seem, no matter how sharp tongued, he seemed desperate to save someone. He seemed like he was struggling for an important person harder than anyone else. He had cultivated those talents not for himself but for the sake of somebody else.  
  
For the longest time, Matsuda was what Komaeda considered his ideal model of a person who revolutionizes a field with their talent, and brings hope to others because of it. How many patients would be helped now with the strides Matsuda was making in his research towards degenerative brain conditions and memory loss.  
  
Matsuda was a truly kind person, even though he was suffering more than anyone else he had worked hard and studied all his life to spare people from the loss he had suffered with his own mother. Komaeda thought that, he really admired him for that.

No, that’s not it.  
What did he care about a bunch of faceless people who might benefit from Matsuda’s research.  
From the moment he saw Matsuda, he thought, this might be the hope I came to this school to find.  
  
“Would you shut up, you’re the one who’s supposed to be getting analyzed. I heard that’s why Miaya threw you out and refused to keep seeing you.” Another talent of Komaeda’s he had even managed to piss off the super high school level therapist. Haha, that wasn’t a talent though, calling such a thing a talent was just sad. Sadder than the combined tragedy of his life. “I’ve never been analyzed by a dipshit before either.”

“I’m not trying to analyze you. Self involved trash like me could never possibly understand another person, in fact I’m just speaking of my own perspective. I’m a team player, one who wants to see his classmates shine as bright as possible. That’s why it’s so strange you’re always alone, Matsuda-kun.”

Despite the fact that Komaeda was his usual un-charming self, unlike Miaya Yasuke never threw him out or failed to miss one of his appointments. Even if he just grumbled the entire time he was still there.

“Yeah, I don’t think Hope’s Peak Academy’s least popular student gets to lecture me about not having friends.” Matsuda said as he looked over the data readouts in front of him.  
  
Komaeda understood what that remark meant, but it also made no sense to him. The lucky student was often considered a luxury, a talentless hack that got the benefits of hope’s peak high school without demonstrating an extraordinary talent.  
  
Luck is no talent, every member on the steering committee believed this with the exception of Kirigiri Jin, his position in the class was basically a school wide running joke.

He was also a problem child. An incredibly problematic one. He meddled with the affairs of other students and caused nothing but problems. He had even learned of Yasuke’s own history with his mother and planned to used that past pain of Yasuke’s for his own selfish purposes. What’s more, the worst thing about him was that he never meant any harm for what he did.  
  
His existence was nothing but a source of constant worry to the headmaster, but

 _“Still we have no other choice but to acknowledge his luck. Don’t you think his power is one befitting of being called a talent?”  
_  
Komaeda could not understand why the others are paranoid, angry, and afraid of him. He knew his actions hurt others, he saw the results and understood them but he did not quite comprehend the threads which connected from point a, to point b, to point c. For example after a few sessions even the timid Miaya who was the super high school level therapist despised him, but Komaeda assumed that result would happen from the start. He already knew he was unfixable. He did not quite seem to understand that arguing with the therapist every step of the way, going out of his way to make things harder for her to prove how unfixable he was, was what exactly led to her giving up on him.  
  
In fact, he was confused by others behavior. There were sometimes he thought others were strange for acting so suspicious of him, when an insignificant person like him could never possibly cause harm to a group of elite teen geniuses. They were all smarter and better than him by far, their collective hopes would crush someone weak like him, so he did not understand why anybody could be afraid of him scheming against him.  
  
That all being said, he assumed from the start others would hate him, just because he was a lower human being. He did not think at all that his actions had driven them to hate him, to outcast him, he just assumed that was the inevitable result and acted accordingly. From the start he insisted he was unworthy again and again to attend this school, but in a moment of weakness when Kirgiri insisted he could be a part of the culmination of Ultimate Hope he had agreed.  
  
Therefore he had it backwards in his head to begin with, he saw the reason that everybody looked away from him was because he was nothing more than the Ultimate Lucky student who did not deserve to be among them.  
  
In this tragicomedy, he would be the character who goes on and on about fate, but thne instead turned out to be a self fulfilling prophecy.  
  
That was why Matsuda’s remarks about him being unpopular confused him. He already knew he would be unpopular from the beginning, others being around him was a net negative, he could only hurt them and there was nothing he could give them to begin with. It was natural he be alone. He did not understand why Matsuda would think he had anything to do with it.  
  
Or why their situations were comparable at al. After all Matsuda was somebody who deserved to be admired by others. Komaeda really hoped, everybody else would see how talented Matsuda was and praise him, that he could help many more people besides people who could not be helped like him.  
  
Even if that meant their private sessions where Komaeda got to talk to him and be heard for the first time in a long time came to an end. He was fine with those ending if it meant Matsuda’s talent could be admired by more people.  
  
Even if he wasn’t the one admiring him.  
No wait, maybe he wasn’t fine with that.  
No, that was probably not what he wanted. He was more selfish than that.  
Why was trash like him pretending to be selfless again?  
  
“I don’t get what you’re saying, Matsuda-kun. There’s no way I would ever lecture you, and besides our situations aren’t comparable at all. I’m sorry if I insulted you without realizing it by comparing you to myself, I apparently do that a lot…”  
  
Komaeda’s fingers had curled in front of his face, but noticing he was making a familiar gesture his body quickly walked himself back and he flicked his fingers before putting them against his chest instead.  
  
“I don’t think we’re that dissimilar, we’re both cheeky bastards that no one likes. In fact the worst insult is probably comparing you to me…”

Matsuda said without glancing up from his work.  
  
“No, you don’t get it, not at all. There are those who are worthy and those who are not so worthy. We’re in one group or the other from the moment we draw our first breath. If a person isn’t one of the chosen there’s not much they can do. No one’s anointed by elbow grease. It’s clear inborn talent is all that matters, that’s our world, and I want to help the worthy shine as bright as possible. In most circumstances, you using that talent to save my life would just be a waste of your time.”  
  
“Then what do you call this right now? Why are you here right now if you don’t think I can do anything for you?”

“I’m making myself useful right now, by being one of your experiments. When two species of hope collide I wanna watch the fireworks. Imagine what a privilege that would be. The chosen ones of hope going head to head as they come into their own. ”  
  
“Hope is a battlefield to you?” Matsuda shivered for a moment as if recalling an unpleasant memory.

At that moment Komaeda saw Matsuda’s neck twitch as if fingers were enclosing around it, but then he thought it was ridiculous for him to claim to understand or even notice anything at all about a fellow human being, as idiotic and oblivious as he was. He needed to backpedal even more quickly.“I understand. Don’t pay attention to a word I say, just the philosophical musings of a no one.”  
  
At which point Matsuda finally looked up. He looked Komaeda directly in the eye. “Don’t ever talk about yourself like that. You’re not a ‘no one’, you’re my patient.”  
  
For some reason, Komaeda could not even recall anybody ever looking at him so directly like that, or even looking at him in the eye. All the other doctors before this simply averted their eyes, and even when Kirigiri Jin who he thought cared about him spoke up on his behalf.

 _“Even if your student was the plot’s chief architect. If he brought about a measurable result without direct intervention, that’s a talent we don’t dare let go.”_ He only spoke of his strange luck.  
  
_Matsuda-kun really is a kind person._ _  
_ Matsuda pushed others away, he isolated himself among the students of hope’s peak academy, because he was quiet soft and he did not want that part of him to be exploited.  
The moment Komaeda realized that though, an unbearable thought crossed his mind.  
_You’ll ruin him._

 _Because that’s what you do to kind people._ _  
_ _  
_ “No, no, no, you don’t understand. Unlike me you’re an important person. That’s why I don’t want you to spend too much time on me, just consider me a cadaver that you can disect to learn from and then throw away.”

“You’re alive right now aren’t you? Quit talking about yourself like you’re an already walking corpse. Funny, how you always go on and on about how much you respect people’s talent, but you’re underestimating mine right now by saying I can’t do anything for you. You’re one hell of a cheeky brat you know that.”  
  
As he said that Komaeda winced. Not by the harshness in his tone. In fact, he wished Matsuda would insult him, throw him out of his office, tell him he was a waste of time and he would never be fixed like all the others had. He was used to that, he could bear that. It was the kindness hidden behind his harsh words that was unbearable to him.  
  
“Besides I don’t consider myself an important person. In fact, nobody in this school gives much of a damn about me, I’m just a cog in the machine to produce more research. They only care about the results I bring in and I could be easily replaced by another ultimate…”  
  
As he said that, a fond smile crept on his face.

“But there is one person I’m important to. For the sake of that person, I’ll even stay in a shitty school like this and pretend to get along with the shitty adults, and my shitty classmates.”

That was how Komaeda knew he was selfish.  
Because the moment he saw that smile creep on Matsuda’s lips, he did not think at all about how the always miserable Matsuda finally looked happy about something. He was not relieved that one of his beloved holders of talent felt appreciated and was using his talent to help an important person.  
  
All he thought was _I wish I could become that person._

 

😈

 

 

Hope is a waking dream.  
It was a dream that others got to entertain, those who were worthy of it and not him.  
Sometimes he was afraid that because he could not see it.  
It was nothing more than a fever dream on his part.  
  
Those days passed dream like, Komaeda would laugh giddy as he sat on the edge of the mattress. He would kick his feet just like a child at a doctor’s office waiting for a lollipop. Though every time he had visited a doctor in the past he had never allowed himself to act like such a happy go lucky child. However, there were times he would come into Matsuda’s office with a foul mood. That was because there was one other patient who visited Matsuda on a regular basis.Komaeda knew it was not his place to watch the utlimates interact. He had no place among them. Yet when the door was left open by a crack, his colorless eye peered through it. The one with the better vision, as his vision had always been a bit uneven and lopsided like the rest of him.  
  
_That person has her claws in Matsuda-kun._

Matsuda seemed to be doing his best to ignore the girl with blonde pigtails at his desk, as he looked at his paperwork like always.  
  
“The hell did I say about touching me, super ugly? What if ugliness is contagious?” He snapped at her when she tried to get closer.  
  
She barely looked affected.  
She invaded his personal space as if that was an invitation, and sat on his lap crossing her legs comfortably there.

“God, not only are you ugly, and stupid, it looks like you’re deaf as well. Don’ t touch me.”  
  
“Touching you requires acknowledging you as a human being Matsuda-kun, but to me you’re just a chair right now. Nobody cares about the feelings of a chair that’s being sat in, right chair-kun?”  
  
“How the hell did I end up getting dragged around by such a self important delusional girl like you. Who did I offend in a past life to get saddled with you?”  
  
Even as he said that, and looked at the point of exasperation, Komaeda could tell that it was all an extension of Matsuda’s usual act.  
  
SHe was wearing their school uniform, with a brown colored jacket customzied to display her chest and unbuttoned to the point her bra was showing.  
  
“Hey don’t you think it’s unfair that I’m showing my tits and you’re being all stingy, Mat! Su! Da! Kun!” That girl said as she reached forward with her red nails and unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt. “Hey lemme see yours too. I wanna see your chest.”  
  
“I was right from the beginning, you really are just some perverted stalker. Maybe I should call the police on you so you’ll stop harassing me.”  
  
“That’s not fair at all Matsuda-kun. Why are you so mean to your stalker?”  
  
“So you admit to stalking me?”

“Only because you like it.” Just then she reached down and stole a stethoscope away from his desk. Placing it in her ears, she pushed the other part to his chest, where his heart should be. “See, even though you’re showing me such an unpleasant face, your heart is all badump, badump, right now. I diagnose you with the case of the doki dokis.”  
  
“That’s not a real medical condition and you know it!” Matsuda’s face pinched tight. You could tell he was backed into a corner by her because he could not come up with a better comeback then that.  
  
As she got bored of messing with his chest she went onto his hair instead, she reahced forward and grabbed the antennae that stuck up from his bedhead and pulled at it. “Hey, Masuda-kun how come you have this one part of your hair that’s always sticking straight up when you see me, does that mean another part of you is sticking up?”  
  
“The only thing that goes up when I see you is my urge to vomit.”

Komaeda’s eyes trembled watching through the crack in the door. He saw Matsuda’s hair carelessly being pulled, and wondered for a moment what it would be like if it were his pale hands and long girlish fingers, messed up in Matsuda’s hair, pulling at it.

 _I hate her…_ _  
_ _I hate her because she’s despair._ _  
_ _That’s it, that’s the only reason._ _  
_ _  
_ He noticed that Matsuda had been trying to write the entire time that the girl continued to toy with him but it was impossible, that girl was like a gravitational force which pulled Matsuda in. He finally dropped his pen and gave into her.  
  
The precious ultimate talents of hope’s peak needed to be preserved, but Komaeda decided he would not mind or a minute if that girl jumped off the rooftop and broke herself onto the pavement. If that woman with her perfect curves and doll like appearance, had her head shatter.  
  
It would be a horrible waste of talent, especially for someone like him to wish it upon her. But it would be better. Hope’s Peak needed to remain pure, untouched by despair, as did Matsuda.  
  
As she passes him in the hallway she whispers to him. “Komaeda-senpai, were you watching?”

Matsuda did not even notice his presence. The moment he dos though he looks ashamed of himself. “That’s why you shouldn’t be so loud, you made me miss my important appointment.”  


“More important than me? Matsuda-kun you’re always so distant nowadays, ever since coming to this school. Why can’t things go back to like when we were kids.” Komaeda does not understand people well, but he can tell from the pain that flashes through Matsuda’s eyes that she said this innocent sounding statement specifically to hurt him. “Well, that should be fine even when somebody else plays with my toys they’re still my toys. Have fun with him, Komaeda-senpai.”  
  
“You realize I’m right here? Jeez, no wonder nobody wanted to play with you when we were kids. You deserved all those bullies who went after you, why did I stick up for you again?”  
  
As he says this, Matsuda pushes her away and out of the room. Komaeda can tell though. He wants to spend more time in her presence, he wants to never be apart from her, the moment he’s cut off from her Matsuda goes back to sulking.  
  
Even when she’s gone, that girl’s absence in the room is felt by Komaeda. Matsuda looked up at him and saw blood dribble from the corner of his lips.  


He reached up and tilted Komaeda’s chin back. “The hell are you doing? Did you not notice you were bleeding, idiot?”  
  
“Haha, I’m so stupid. Even Matsuda-kun the world’s greatest neurologist should know my brain is unsalvageable.”  
  
Matsuda shoved his fingers in his mouth, making Komaeda feel like he was about to suffocate. He figured out the source of the bleeding in an instant. Komaeda had been biting down on his own tongue so hard that he caused himself to bleed, he almost bit clean through it.  
Matsuda made him chew on gauze to stop the bleeding.

“Sorry, sorry. Matsuda-kun, you’re really the brightest person in our class. I don’t even deserve to be close enough to be the shadow at your feet.”  
  
“Amazing. You’re chewing on gauze and you still manage to run your mouth. If you’re going to say such weird things than choke on them and die already.”  
  
Komaeda is a little bit happy, when Matsuda talked to him as harshly as he did that girl.  
_Matsuda is always so bright. He’s just like a star._ _  
_ _But that girl is collapse itself, a black hole. No light can escape from her._

He knew that girl was no good.  
Komaeda’s own values should have just let things play out. In fact according to his logic, it was only natural a bright light like Matsuda would attract a shadow, somebody he had to step over and overcome. It was a good thing that Matsuda would fight against despair eventually, because that would make his hope burn all the brighter.  
  
However, the fact that that girl’s despair was the one who would challenge Matsuda’s hope, made Komaeda burn inside. If he killed her, he would become an even greater despair for Matsuda to face, the one who took his important person away, and then Matsuda would become obsessed with him and eventually be the hope that burned away Komaeda’s despair.  
  
Being that kind of special person to Matsuda, he got flustered up just thinking about it.  
However.  
_If I tried to kill her, Matsuda-kun would protect her._ _  
_ _Hmmm… if that were the case I’d get to see Matsuda-kun’s face as I die but…_  
It was natural that he was unimportant, Komaeda had accepted that a long time ago.  
He loved the light, so much so he wanted to drown in it and be burned by it at the same time.  
He wanted to disappear just at the moment he witnessed somebody arise to their greatest hope.  
If he would die at that moment, if he was murdered by that person called hope that was better.  
After all could you imagine the strong dedication to hope it would take to sacrifice a human life?  
So why was he burned so much by the fact that this girl was important to Matsuda?

Why was he bothered so much by the fact that he knew if he threatened this girl in front of Matsuda, Matsuda would most certainly kill him?

Then he realized, in all of his spiraling thoughts he did not even consider once how Matsuda would feel losing that person. That person who made him feel important.  
Komaeda pretending he had better intentions for Matsuda, what a farce.  
He wanted to laugh.  
He wanted to laugh so hard his teeth clattered _,_ that his lower man and by mistake in the middle of his raptuous laughter he wanted to bite off his own tongue causing it to swell so he was suffocated by it, he wanted to choke on that laughter and die.

 

😈

 

 

“Pretty much all the results so far are consistent with frontotemporal dementia. It’s odd to show up in somebody so young but… I have personal experience with this in the past. Somebody I know contracted a disease that resembled alzheimer's far younger than anyone typically contracts it.”  
  
Matsuda said, but somehow being told the same diagnosis over again did not hurt Komaeda at all. In fact he was happy. He said so. “Matsuda-kun, I’m so happy. Now you don’t have to waste your time on me anymore.”

“I’m the doctor, I’ll tell you when the treatment ends. Jeez, did any other doctor in history get lectured this much.”  
  
“Actually, I stayed silent for all the other doctors Matsuda-kun. You’re the only one who listens to me.”  
  
“Lucky them. It seems I’m just the idiot.”  Even as Matsuda said this, there was no regret in his voice. That irked Komaeda somewhat. Regret meeting me a little more. Give up on me already. “You’re not dead until you’re dead, until then I can keep seeing you.”  
  
“Awe, but then I’ll only end up taking more of Matsuda-kun’s time. If I’m already going to die why don’t you just strangle me with that stethoscope you’re holding.”

“Quit saying weird things.”  
  
“If I’d be more useful to you as an autopsy you can perform, then I’d be happy. As long as I can see your face as I die, you can even call it an assisted suicide.”  
  
“I said shut up! Quit mouthing off like you’re some lost cause, for an idiot you sure are impudent. I’m the only one who can decide that! You’re not dead yet, there’s still some way I can stop the degeneration and loss of memories.”

In that moment Komaeda recognized he had gone too far. Casually talking about his own death he had stomped all over Matsuda’s trauma. It was bad enough that Komaeda himself felt powerless, he did not need to ruin one of his beloved talents by making them feel powerless too.  
  
It was like he was trying to drag them down to his level, how arrogant of him really. He stopped kicking his legs and the smiled faded off his face. He only smiled because he memorized the facial muscles that people pulled on when they smiled after all, he could not remember the last time someone had shown him a genuine smile. “I’m sorry, Matsuda-kun. In trying to offer myself up on a platter to help you, I’ve only made you more upset.”  
  
“Offer yourself up on a platter, what am I some kind of cannibal?” Matsuda shook the image away of Komaeda on a plate waiting to be devoured. Komaeda’s nightmare fetishistic nature would probably be somewhat into that. “Look, there is something you can help me with I’ve been thinking about something lately.”

At that moment Matsuda looked troubled. Not only that Komaeda could tell, as much as he worried Matsuda-kun with his unstable behavior, he would never be able to trouble the boy to this extent. He was rattled down to his core.  
  
“What do you think about hope?”  
  
“It’s something that can save anyone.”  
  
“What if I was selfish, what if I wasn’t trying to give hope to the whole world, what if I just wanted to give it to one person.”  
  
“Well, isn’t that how it always is Matsuda-kun? I mean look at the reserve course. The money from 3,500 people is used to fuel your research, the combined weight of 3,500 people is nothing to you.”  
  
“I thought you were the kind of guy who believed there’s always hope.”  
  
“There is always hope, but in life this world is divided into the have and have nots. Just like there are people who are strong and weak, there are people with strong and weak hopes and it’s only natural the vast majority of people would be sarificed so a few people could brightly shine.”  
  
“Then, what do you think about love? Is love hope?”  
  
“For some people yes. Think about it this way, whatever motivates people to keep on living for the future, whatever reason that they can find to win in the end, we call that hope. That’s why there will always be hope, because humans can always find a reason.”  
  
Matsuda was seriously listening to him, and because of that this time Komaeda did not want to say something wrong and upset him. “What if… the person I loved was a bad person. What if I didn’t care about anybody else, even if the whole world hated me, as long as I was able to continue loving them and living for them. Is loving them wrong then? Is that despair or hope?”  
  
Komaeda watched with his fingers curled up against his face. He blinked, understanding and not understanding at the same time what Matsuda spoke about. “I don’t think it matters who you love.. As long as you aren’t hurting others, it’s all good no.”  
  
Suddenly, Matsuda interrupted him. “Nah. I’d gladly hurt others if I needed to. For the sake of what I love.”  
  
He concealed that part of his nature from Komaeda all along.

Komaeda almost felt lied too.  
It was strange he usually noticed the ugliest parts of people first, he was usually shown that, but Matsuda had been kind to him for so long he had completely forgotten this part of him.  
Komaeda had no idea what to say.  
  
For a moment in shock, he had no idea what face he was showing Matsuda in response. His expression which was usually unreadable to everybody else, became so for him as well.

Whether Matsuda understood his shock or not, he quickly moved onto the next subject. Matsuda’s mask came back on and Komaeda almost felt disappointment. Perhaps he could have connected to Matsuda and truly helped him in this moment if he had not been caught off guard.  
  
Perhaps the only reason he hesitated was because he wanted to be the one Matsuda was willing to make such a dangerous statement about. He wanted to be the reckless source of his hope Matsuda would risk anything for.  
He could have slotted into that backstory nicely, he thought.  
Sometime in the past atsuda makes a troublesome childhood friend, as they grow up together that friend develops a brain disease similar to his mother and then Matsuda thinking that he will not lose this time devotes all of himself to studying the brain in order to cure it. He develops an amazing talent, with Komaeda as the sacrifice, the stepping stone.

In that sense Komaeda would not even mind just being cast as the center of his tragic backstory, even if it meant his inevitable death in the present to spurn Matsuda further.  
To be a person so important to someone that they would develop a talent around you, devote all of their talent into curing you, even if they failed in the end Komaeda might have been happy with just that.

In fact he did not even need Matsuda to b an amazing talent. If he had a childhood friend that stuck by him, no matter how weird he was, no matter how offputting his personality became, perhaps always being watched by that person he would have grown up a lot more human.  
Instead of how he was now, someone who had forgotten to be human and wondered aloud how everybody else was so much better at pretending to be human than he was. Because everybody looked away from him, he forgot. He could not see himself in their eyes at all.  
Then again that was just his own selfish desires speaking. If Matsuda had been his childhood friend, he would have died a long time ago. It was for the best there was no one like him in the world.  
  
Just as he resigned himself, Matsuda spoke up. “You know when you talk about this reserve course stuff, you remind me of another patient of mine. This other annoying guy I know. He’s like you in that he realizes this school is treating kids unfairly by dividing them into important and unimportant people but it’s not like he wants to fix that, or even himself he just wants to be one of the important people.”  
  
“Someone who reminds you of me?” Komaeda tilted his head to the side. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but if someone as worthless as me reminds you of some other person… they must be extremely unlucky.”

 

😈

 

He would never be that important to someone. He would never have someone as important to him as Matsuda clearly had. He had accepted those ideas a long time ago. He was just too oddly shaped, he did not fit in with the rest of humanity. He was grateful enough being able to observe them from afar.

Even though Komaeda had made up his mind a long time ago, and he considered himself quite stubborn on those values he wondered why he started to think of them again now of all times. He thought no matter what situation he found himself in, his core way of thinking would never change. In order to create absolute hope that shines brightly, step ladders such as himself and despair existed.  
  
However, his time on the island brought about an unexpected result. No matter how hard he tried, there were people who kept looking at him. For the first time in a long while he was forced to look at his ugly and unclean self. Whether he deserved it or not, those people stuck around him trying to understand him. Hinata and Kumagawa, he did not know two people like that existed.  
  
Neither of them were extraordinary hope either, they were just ordinary boys. Kumagawa’s only extraordinary feature was his trauma. Komaeda did not want to admit that Kumagawa being able to withstand that trauma might in itself be extroardinary because that would mean complimenting himself.  
  
Either way no matter how awfully he acted and how much he reminded those two people of his awful self, they refused to look away. So Komaeda started to think, perhaps he could never change the way everyone wanted to, perhaps he could never be fixed, or saved, but there still must be some way he could be better than he had been before.  
  
Rather than living just to die, he could at least think of the future ore and live for the sake of the future, because he wanted to keep seeing those two again. A future that they could all be a part of… part of hope was… sentimentality, its fragments were powered by the bonds with others. There was a slight change in his thinking, but still that did not explain to him what was happening right now.  
  
Yet he still could not explain why those memories with Matsuda were suddenly replaying in his mind now, why he could not stop thinking about them. Of course he never really had been able to control his obsessive swirling thoughts, but at the very least he did not see how his past with Matsuda was tangent to the current moment.  
  
To him the hospital was horrifying, a reminder of the cold and unfeeling environments he had been subjected to in the past, where doctor after doctor examined him and then proceeded to blame him for his own weird mindset.  
  
He would have preferred the doctors just admit that they did not know what was wrong with him. He thought the constant accusations that he was making it up, or that he was not trying were just a little bit mean.

Perhaps that was part of why Komaeda soon began to lose interest in medical talents that were not considered ultimate. Run of the mill doctors barely gave any effort for him after all. Even a challenging career profession like a doctor, there would still be extreme talents standing at the top and the vast majority would be average and falling in the middle of the bell curve to make those talents shine all the brighter.  
  
A lot of children turned to fantasies about heroes to save them when nobody else in the world would. Komaeda thought it was pretty normal. He had no idea why people treated his love of Ultimates like it was some twisted kind of obsession.  
  
This hospital should be upsetting to him, the ugly sights, the broken up glass, the smell of dingy basement that reminded him of the time he was kidnapped, the smell of mould mixing with the sterile smells reminding him of tw unpleasant memories at once. This entire place should be screaming at him to run away, ad instead he ran further and further into the spooky hospital.

After all the person he was chasing down its halllways was none other than Hinata-kun. Perhaps he had not changed as much as he thought he had, because he was doing what he always did, chasing the light because he was afraid of the dark.  
  
He was still a child after all this time.  
  
It didn’t occur to Komaeda that he might be being brave, or heroic. He could never even conceive of himself this way. He would never even think for a single moment that the reason he was chasing Hinata-kun like this was because he genuinely wanted to help him.  
  
Because Komaeda more than anybody else knew what it was like to be lost, to forget what face you were supposed to be wearing at the moment, when everyone else seemed to know but you.  
  
Komaeda could not run as fast as Kamukura though, and he was also not particularly good at navigating spacially. Jeez, having a chronically ill body really got in the way at the worst times. Not only was he constantly in pain, it was just also so darn inconvenient.

However when he heard the sound of shattering glass, and considered Hinata’s near constant state of existential peril ever since he had come out of that simulation he thought following that sound was a good place to start looking.  
  
When Komaeda reached where he was, even though he felt about to collapse he forgot everything he was feeling when he saw Hinata on the floor. Hinata’s hands were bloody, he must have cut himself on the glass that he had broken. There were reassembled pieces of glass on the floor, assembled like puzzle pieces. Oh that was right Hinata did like puzzles. After breaking the windows, maybe he tried to piece together some form of mirror to look at himself again regretting his momentary impulse to look away.  
  
Hinata rocked back and forth. The rejuvenation song that they were all being subjected too seemed to be the hardest on him especially, because it was not just a matter of getting younger, or thinking his past self was more foolish, he had actively been several different people in the past.  
  
Hinata had already made the choice to stop being his original untouched self in the simulation, and go back to the empty shell that was Kamukura and try to regain himself slowly evening that cold, unfeeling shell that felt like nothing more than a prison to him. To try to live that way without lashing out at the world around him, and instead change himself slowly the long, and much more difficult path.  
  
Komaeda thought he was amazing for making that choice, but he was Hinata after all. No matter how rude, selfish and quick tempered he was he always tried to do the right thing in the end. Even if he had made nothing but wrong choices up until that point. However, it was like that choice which Hinata had made staking his entire being on was undone in front of his eyes.

Then redone, then undone over again, then redone. HInata himself had enough trouble telling how much of himself now was Hajime’s influence, how much was Kamukura’s, and whether he was half one, half the other, or some kind of jumbled up smoothie like combination of both.

When he took a step forward he was Hajime again. When he took a step back he was Kamukura. Even though it was only his outside appearance that was changing, Hinata had many dreams of this in the past, he had hallucinated scenarios like this over and over again during the fifty two rounds he was in the killing game.  
  
He had scratched his face off until nothing was left but Kamukura’s inky blackness. He had drowned in waters that were stained by Kamukura’s essence, feeling like he was drowing in Kamakura entirely. He had felt his shadow become Kaukura and extend from his feet, growing a pair of two red eyes that watched him. Kamukura had split his ribs apart and emerged from his within him, only to try to meld with him.  
  
He could not keep going like this, anybody, even god would go mad under these circumstances. Yet, destroying all the windows around him had done nothing at all, and running had not helped either. Because if he did either of those things, if he stopped looking away at himself for even a moment he would forget. He would forget who he was again, and that was terrible.  
  
Because the last time he had forgotten who he was, he did things he could never take back. He had made everybody else suffer for the sake of his existential dilemma. Perhaps Junko and Kumagawa were capable of living without fighting the emptiness inside of him, but Hinata could not do it. He was not strong, if he acknowledged how empty he was even for a moment it would consume him.

As he did not know already how much of a faker he was. He was just as artificial as that Iihiko who was an artificial recreation of a hero, his fight against the other had reminded him as much. His brain, his face, his eyes, his muscles, everything about him had been redone in that surgery. He might as well be made of plastic at this point.  
  
For such a person, how could he say anything he felt was truly his. How could he believe that he actually found those things important. Peraps he was just looking for a reason. As the king of the fakes himself, he just wanted to deceive himself in believing there was a purpose, something he could devote his existence to.  
  
He had deceived everyone else, and even deceived himself into believing he knew what he was doing now, that he knew how to atone for his actions. However, that was all coming undone at the seams right now. He was being unmasked, exposed in front of all of them.

His head hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, it had been torn apart with a scalpel and stitched together so many times. His left and right lobes were connected by stitches, his synapses were probably just stitches too that would eventually snap, and when that happened all five lobes of his brain would fall apart. He wondered if a skull splitting headache could be called that if it literally felt like your skull was going to cave in and split apart.  
  
Yet in all of this, he barely felt anything. He was not sad enough to cry, he was not scared enough to scream, it felt like he was battling a numbness that consumed his body and yet he did not even have enough of a heart to get upset about it.  
  
That was probably for the best though, if he could remain the regular unfeeling Kamukura than that would be best. Or maybe what the others needed more of him was the Hinata who could at least feel the same emotions that other people did, to the point that he got overwhelmed by them.  
  
Which one did they want him to be? Please, just tell him it was hard enough trying to figure it out on his own. Even when he thought he was trying his best to be the best version of himself for the sake of others, his insecurity crept in and reminded him this was probably just his own vanity. He still wanted to be liked. After everything he did, he still thought he had the right to be accepted by the people among him, the failure that he was.  
  
He was not a failed experiment. He was just a failed human. Over and over again he was asked to be a person, to care about others, to think about others besides himself and he failed at it again and again. Even this moment of running away, it was the culmination of a life of failures. If he had faced himself more thoroughly before this, if he had done anything other than run away, he would not be struggling so much right now.  
  
Everybody else could look at their face and see it was themselves, everybody else seemed to know what to feel in the right situation and how to respond to the feelings of others, he wondered why something so easy for everyone else he completely failed at.  
  
He was scared of his body, of his face, of being trapped in that body of a person he did not like but the same was true for absolutely everybody else in the whole world. He was afraid nobody could ever understand him, or think the same way that he did but that was true for everybody else as well.  
  
To die from such a common affliction, he was just failing at being a person in this moment.

  
After all this was the case for everyone. They were not the exact same person as they were a year ago. As they were five years ago. As they were ten years ago. They could never return to being that person either, as time progressed it was inevitable they would change.  
  
So the same was for Hinata, everybody lived by killing their past selves. Hinata Hajime the reserve course student had died, and Kamukura Izuru stepped over his corpse. Izuru had killed himself so Hinata Hajime the mysterious hope’s peak student could live on Jabberwock Island. Hinata Hajime chose to die, to give Izuru Kamukura another chance at living even though he was afraid of such a lifeless shell. Then, if the current him died then who would he become next?  
  
That was the same for everybody else too, nobody knew exactly who they would be in the future. He was amazing, amazing that he had the ability to see twelve steps ahead in every situation, he had every talent imaginable, and yet he constantly was blindsided like this. All the genius in the world and he kept playing the fool over and over again.  
  
No wonder he kept falling into these same traps. He might as well draw his strings for whatever Fake Junko Wannabe was active now, so he could be more effectively played like a fiddle, he should hand ethe strings over to her so he could dance more pleasingly to her whims.  
  
Yet in the end the only one to blame was himself. Who was that again? Which him was he now? Exhausted, and tired of it all Hinata stumbled on his own feet and fell backwards. He had been Kamukura a moment ago but when he fell back his face split like it it had been unzipped and underneath it emerging from the two sides parting was the regular Hinata Hajime. The one who never had anything happen to him.  
  
He looked up at his own hands and saw the reserve course uniform in his sleeves. Perhaps this was what he wanted, to be innocent, not because he had endured trauma just because he wanted to be blameless for his actions.  
  
Komaeda had witnessed the scene slightly differently. He was not hallucinating to the extent that Hinata was, so he saw Hinata age backwards quickly. From Kamukura his hair shortened until it was about at his shoulders, and lightened from the black to dark brown it usually was. Then rather than Kamukura’s suit he was in a hospital gown. Then as he took a step and stumbled back, bandages shifted all over his head, as if he had been operated on and reoperated on again.  
  
Komaeda felt his stomach twist in guit for a moment. After all how many times did Komaeda complain about Hinata never noticing his sickness until he was directly told, Yet he had never reall thought about it. How painful the consecutive surgeries of the Kamukura project must hae been for Hinata to endure. How it must have felt to have his identity slowly slipping away from him until there was nothing left but an empty shell.  
  
After all, Hinata may have always been selfish, and he may have always been egocentric, but at one point he was a mostly normal person. Komaeda had no frame of reerence to what was normal, so he could not mourn properly losing out on those things. Hinata however had all of those things taken away from him slowly over time, and in the end he could only blame himself for being the one to make that decision.

It must have been painful to him. Now that he thought about it, Hinata’s parents must still be alive, and yet he never even mentioned them. Perhaps he was worried they would not recognize their own son and that would be even further proof of his immutable change.  
  
He had lost things which Komaeda had never even had. Yet, he always tried so hard now to see Komaeda as a victim, and never once thought of himself that way. Komaeda had let him as well, because he wanted Hinata to be a strong enough hope that he could overcome his good luck, and he wanted to be protected by him.  
  
Yet, Hinata had been in pain in front of him right now, he was probably hiding that pain for awhile. There was lots of trauma that Hinata would never even allow himself to believe is trauma, because he had things like talent, and needed to appear strong in front of others.

Komaeda took a step forward and enclosed his hands around Hinata’s. He had succumbed to similiar trauma in the past, and been yelled and kicked at, even called annoying when he felt like he was losing himself and became scared and panicked. So, he did not know exactly how to deal with what Hinata was going through, but he at least had some idea of how it must feel like.  
  
His pale fingers intertwined with Hinata’s, they were rough, and felt strong. At that moment Hinata looked and saw Komaeda the way he looked his first day at Hope’s Peak Academy, just a boy in a fresh Hope’s Peak Uniform.  
  
“You know sometimes I think, it would have been nice if we had met this early, Hinata-kun. If I met a nice, normal boy like you perhaps I would have just enjoyed my time at Hope’s Peak watching the cherry blossoms with you, instead of lighting fires so I would have some fireworks to spectate.”

“N-no… that’s no good. If we had met like this I would have run away from you, I would have disappeared. You know I met Chiaki when I was like this, only a reserve course student, even though she was so nice and willing to be friends with me I just ran away from her. I was no good, I would have run away from you too.”  
  
“The you back then was fine, he was Hinata-kun after all. I knew he’d eventually choose to do the right thing.”  
  
“Don’t you understand! I was so weak I could barely stand myself! Not only that but I blamed my own inadequacy on everybody else. I was frustrated at the academy for ot calling me special even though I did nothing to be called special. Even though Chiaki was nothing but nice to me, I assumed she was looking down on me, and I hated her for it, I thought I had to prove something to her.” ‘  
  
“Mmm, but the fact that you wanted to prove yourself is a good thing, it’s what always leads you to try so hard.”

“I didn’t try not at all! How can you even say that you know don’t you? You met the approximation of my reserve course self in the game and did I even try to understand you once? I treated you like some kind of monster, like some freak, like some unsolvable mystery.”

“Hinata-kun.”  
  
“I never even once tried to humanize you, I had to see you as someone utterly inhuman. I couldn’t stand being next to you. I pushed you away as many times as I can. And I can’t even say it was because of your actions. It was all just me. You reminded me of myself and I didn’t want to face or understand myself.”  
  
“Hinata-kun…”  
  
“And even now I don’t know why you’re even here next to me. Why are you bothering with me? I’m going to start arguing with you again sooner or later, treating you like some kind of inhuman thing. I’m no better than everybody else in your whole life I’m just like all those other people who lashed out at you because they couldn’t understand me.”  
  
“Hinata-kun…”  
  
“So why do you treat me as someone whose special to you? Someone whose kind? There was nothing special about me to begin with, I just want the importance of being special, but I don’t actually want to put in the effort of doing something for someone, or being there for someone.”  
  
“Hinata-kun…”  
  
“Even now I’m not listening to you at all.”  
  
“Well yes, HInata-kun but that's okay I don't ever say anything worth listening too-”  
  
“How can you even stand being here? You should be losing it just as badly as I am, no you’ve had it far worse than I ever did, yet I’m making you put all your issues aside and comfort me all over again.”  
  
“Hinata-kun, the reason I can stand right now, even though you’re right and I’m weak, and I don’t know what to do is because you’re here. If the situation were reversed, I think you’d try to do the same for me. No matter how much I screamed in your face I didn’t deserve it, no matter how difficult I was you’d try to help me.”

“That’s not true! All I did in the past was run away from you-”

“Yes but, each and every time you gave up, every time you ran away you came back. Hinata-kun, I don’t care if you fail, nothing goes well for me to begin with it’s what I’m used to but…” Komaeda himself had no idea what face he was making at this moment, he hoped he was showing Hinata a pleasant one though. Even though he had memorized what muscles it took to smile, he hoped he could smile all on his own just thinking of HInata, and then show him that smile. “There was someone who struggled to see me as a human being, and because of that struggle I started to look at myself as one again. That’s why, I wanted to do the same for you.”  
  
_If you lose sight of yourself then I’ll help you look._ _  
_

Komaeda had said it over and over again from the beginning. That they were similar. That they were people who both hung back in the crowd, boring nobodies who could only watch from the sidelines.  
  
At the time Hinata was trying so desperately to be a somebody. He believed so much he was just an ultimate who forgot his talent, and once he remembered it again once he had that talent the emptiness would go away.  
  
He did not want to look at Komada, because that would mean Komaeda would look back into him. He had deemed Komaeda as worthless ever since the first trial and started to look down on him.  
  
In the end though his beliefs were exactly the same. He was not upset that Komaeda believed some people were special in this world and some people were not. He just got upset over the fact that he was not counted as one of those special people. Perhaps if from the start he had a talent, if he was fast at running, good at jumping, if he was a good swimmer, than he would have never even taken issue with Komaeda’s philosophy.  
  
The beliefs he thought were alien were just his own he refused to accept. He too was struggling to be important to people, to be important to the situation, just because he wanted to be counted among those important people, because he would always feel like an outsider otherwise.  
  
He had not forgotten his talent, he had just forgotten who he was. The petty kind of person he really was. The closer he got to remembering the more and more he deluded himself. The further he sunk into his delusions the crueler he was to Komaeda.  
  
That would probably just happen all over again. They would go back to fighting. They would snap at each other, they would be rude and immature, and bicker over nothing at all. They would hurt one another.

It was a bad idea, both of them who were so similar trying to find the love they could not find for themselves in each other.  
Yet no matter how hard he tried Komaeda would not let go of that hand. His breathing grew harsh, and he started to forget when to breathe. Oh great he was so terrible at being a human even his basic functions were failing now.  
  
His hands shook uncontrollably, even though he needed to be the steady one. Literally all he was good for was staying calm, emotionless, and keeping a cool head, he was failing at the one thing Kamukura did, literally the one thing just sitting still.  
  
He could not control the shaking of his body, or even his lungs, he was rattled down to his bone. Yet no matter how much he shook Komaeda’s hands still held onto him. He was barely breathing at all a moment ago and suddenly he was breathing too fast.  
  
Kamukura had no idea why he had lost control of his body. It was suddenly spasming. Perhaps he really was falling apart at the seams after all, his stitched together body. DId his organs really even belong to him anymore. THey might have been transplants, he could just be assembled from body parts stolen from other graves and he never would know the difference. He did not know what it would be like to feel whole to begin with.  
  
“Haaa….”  
  
“Haaaaa….”  
  
“Haaaaaaaaaaa…”  
  
As his breathing got worse Komaeda watched him. _He’s hyperventilating._ Komaeda recognized the symptom at least. Somehow, somebody else was being more dramatic than him at the moment. _I should get a bag or something._ However instead of that, he grabbed both sides of his shaking face as if his hands were what was keeping the two sides from falling apart. He crawled over the shaking Hinata on the ground and then tilted his chin up and slammed his lips against his.  
  
Not to kiss him in the moment but to stop him from breathing so fast. As his body curled around the struggling Hinata’s, Hinata reached up and grabbed him by the back of his coat, his fingers twisting in the fabric of it.  
  
“Haa…”  
  
“Haaaaa….”

“Wha…”  
  
“Aha, your breathing settled. So it doesn't need to be a bag as long as you breathe in your own carbon monoxide.” Komaeda said as he drew back.”I saw this in a manga about what to do when someone was hyperventilating so I thought this was worth trying.”  
  
“Hey, how does it feel? How does it feel when a person one person is interacting with another person? We’re supposed to come to know ourselves when we interact with others, but I don’t know other people or myself. When I look at you, a tepid, sticky, disgusting feeling slowly constricts my chest. Is, that love?”  
  
Komaeda's eyes began to spin as if clouds were swirling before a storm. The tepid, sticky, neither black nor white, but not gray, both at once emotion swirled in his eyes as well. He stared with those eyes full of that emotion, hope inducing, despair enducing, and at the center of that love Kamukura disappeared into the center of his eyes like he was being swallowed up by a whirlpool.   
  
“...”  
  
“If you feel love for yourself, how would that feel? If you… told me you loved me instead, would that feel any different? Hey, if I were to know for certain that you loved me… If we were to fall in love, do you think it would be rose tinted like everybody else, a fluffy fluffy feeling, like wonderful colors, like fireworks? How come it’s so different for us? Even if everybody else did love us properly, would we still be unable to return their feelings properly like this?”  
  
“...”  
  
“How come whatever we feel is so vague and indistinct.”  
  
Komaeda was really trying.  
To calm down Kamukura, to reach those emotions in his chest. Even if those emotions were nothing but disgust directed at him, Komaeda wanted to confirm for Kamukura that those were his real feelings. That such things actually existed.  
  
“Just shut up and get away from me, you always say such strange things!”

Hinata suddenly grabbed him by the chest, and with all the strength of Kamukura pushed him back. He was pushed away again as he always was. He bit his tongue as his back hit the wall, because he had been talking so much trying to get Komaeda to understand.

 

😈

 

There was one memory he could never forget with Yasuke, no matter how hard he tried. To this day his side still ached with that memory.

“Matsuda-kun, when I’m on my death bed will you visit me at least? If I could die with you holding my hand it would make me very happy. Though I can understand not even wanting to touch scum like me.”  
  
“Are you still going on about that? Give it a rest.”  
  
“I will give it a rest when I’m dead, a final rest.”  
  
“I already told you I’m not done treating you yet!”  
  
How long had they been arguing like this? Komaeda looked at the clock and saw that the time alotted for their appointment had long elapsed. Komaeda was taking up more of Matsuda’s precious time, and he also was doing it talking about a topic that deeply upset Matsuda but he could not help himself.

There were few people willing to put up with him for this long. Matsuda did not even seeem to be impatient or looking up at the clock.  
  
Matsuda refused to believe he was dying not for Komaeda’s sake, Komaeda already knew that. He only wanted to make it _seem_ like he was a doctor deeply invested in the fate of his patient. Much more important to Matsuda was the fact that he could believe he had the power to stop Koameda’s degenerative brain disease.  
  
Because he was powerless in the past, he never wanted to be that powerless again. Komaeda understood that, not only that but he thought it was his right as a member of the talented. He had overcome so many trials and cultivated a talent out of his trauma, he deserved the right to believe he was in control of his own fate.  
  
There was a meaning to suffering as long as there was hope. Matsuda did not suffer pointless, because he had acquired this talent out of it, he was driven by some higher purpose.  
  
Komaeda was not emotional. He was not angry or sad about it. He just kept making arguments ad nauseum, wanting Yasuke to overcome them. To prove to him that he had enough hope to overcome this trial and force Komaeda to live.  
  
It was a selfish and childish little game now that he thought about it. He was the one playing around with Yasuke’s trauma, he had no right at all to be sad about Yasuke looking down on him from some high horse.  
  
Yet he could not stop from playing his games. They were just so fun. “Are you stupid, Matsuda-kun, or do you just not recognize a lost cause when you see one? Isn’t time you waste on me, time that you can’t spend with your precious person.”  
  
“H-how, how do you know about that?”  
  
“Speaking of that, doing all of this for the sake of one person. How do you know that you’re making your own choices? Are you just a puppet on somebody else’s strings? Your talent could help so many more people yet all you care about is that one person.”  
  
“As long as I’m connected to that person, I don’t care.”  
  
“That’s so stupid. It’s those with talent who have the right to stand above others, you’re a special person… you don’t need somebody to lick your wounds like all the untalented rabble do. Weak people only band together because they want to drag strong people down to their level-”  
  
In the middle of one of their arguments, suddenly the door to Yasuke’s office barged open. It was not Enoshima, like Komaeda expected. In fact it was a boy in a red coat, wearing a tattered hope’s peak uniform.  
  
Izayoi Sonosuke.  
  
He was a former ultimate, so Komaeda had forgotten about his face until just now. In fact Komaeda himself was the reason that Izayoi had stopped being an ultimate, he was one of the three students that was expelled during his bombing scheme. Yet, he had forgotten all about him. He really was reckless. At the time he must have justified it to himself saying that if that person was not smart enough to foil the scheme of a fool like him, then there was no hope for him to begin with, it was probably only a fluke that he was considered ultimate.

“Komaeda, I was waiting for when I’d find you alone. You know for a guy nobody likes, it was difficult to pinpoint a time.”

“What are you doing?” Komaeda asked.  
  
“Hey, get the hell out of my office.”  
  
“That’s no way for both of you to talk about a former senpai. I’ve been wondering who was responsible for me and the sweetness getting expelled, and I find out after all this time it’s you.” The former super high school level blacksmith drew a knife to his hand.  
  
“Are you stupid? I suppose you’re just a commoner like everybody else now, so all you can do is fight over scraps. You can’t possibly blame me for losing the title of ultimate, if you were weak enough to be harmed by a person like me your hope was never strong enough to begin with-”  
  
“It’s not about me. I’m going to stop you. One who’s betrayed others in the past will do it again.” He said as he began to move.

“Go ahead, if the source of your hope is killing me than I welcome it!”  
  
Just before the situation could escalate, Matsuda threw himself in between the two of them. Izayoi stopped, and realized the other was not going to get out of the way. He sighed and then left. He gave up on his revenge for now.  
  
Komaeda was relieved that Matsuda did not hurt himself for his sake. Then, at that moment suddenly Matsuda picked up a scalpel and jammed it into his side.  
  
“Matsuda-kun!”

“Relax, it was nothing that you did.” As Matsuda said that, he fell back on the couch losing feeling in his legs. “I was just thinking… I missed out on an oppurtunity to look like a hero back there, because Izayoi-senpai backed down on his revenge.”

Komaeda immediately rushed to his side. It was not like his organs were spilling out but his familiar untucked white shirt was becoming stained with blood.  
  
“Hey, hey, do you think if someone were to ever threaten that important person with a knife I could jump in front of her just like I did back then… and seeing me move to protect her, seeing me take a knife for her sake, would that finally make her happy?”  
  
His breaths became more ragged. Even if he did not wound himself that badly his body was giving into shock.  
  
“If I became a hero in her eyes… do you think… she’d praise me?”  
  
Komaeda had no answer for his questions.  
He had no experience with love that was not one sided, and beyond that the sight of Matsuda’s cold looking face, heavy with sweat only brought one emotion to mind: jealousy.  
  
He understood what it was like to observe people from afar. He considered himself genuinely different from most other human beings, but it was like Matsuda was in another dimmension entirely.  
  
There was nobody truly important to him, so he could not understand at all. Matsuda gave mechanical instructions on how to bind up the wound he had given himself, and Komaeda followed them without speaking up.  
  
At the end of it, Matsuda was on the ground, resting his head on Komaeda’s lap while Komaeda curled over him, and his hand caressing the back of his head and running through his thick brown hair, another hand overlaid the bandages that were covering Matsuda’s stomach.  
  
“Please tell Junko... “  
  
Even though it was a heartfelt request from Matsuda that was always taking care of him, and always listened to him Komaeda could not hear him in the moment.  
  
His head was too heavy, the same words echoed loudly in it again and again. _I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here._ _  
_ _  
_ Even if he said those words he would not be hear though. All Matsuda could see was the girl he loved so much, he would stab himself and imagine he had taken a knife wound protecting her, playing hero for her sake to impress her.  
  
Love is blind, according to the saying but in Matsuda’s case it was also insane.  
  
And all Komaeda could think about was how he envied him.  
He would never find a person that important to him, nor would he ever be that important person to someone else.

😈

 

In the present Kamukura saw he had done again what he hated himself so much for. He pushed Komaeda away in this moment because his words scared him. They were too much like his own thoughts, the thoughts that swirled in his head that he tried so hard to break free from.  
  
He wanted to shatter the glass as Junko told him so long ago, but what if that glass was himself. No matter, the person he had shattered was Komaeda.  
  
He quickly raced to his side, to see that being thrown so far had caused Komaeda to get quite a bit younger. He was now nothing more than a child with red hair. A  child that looked like he came from a well to do household, but the expensive clothes he was in, and his quiet reserved nature made him look all the more fragile. He wore knee high socks, a button up shirt, and suspenders.  That fragile child looking like he could crumble any minute was the same person Kamukura constantly pushed away, not even caring if he would shatter when he fell.   
  
_I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I know it seems like I’m going to go away constantly, but I won’t go away this time. I’m here. I’m here._ He thought as he cradled the child Komaeda in his hands.  
  
Komaeda simply looked up with the same smile as ever. “See? Even when you push me away you always come chasing after me again. Gosh, you're just like a dog that always followed me around when I was this age how pathetic.”   
  
His voice was decidedly unchildlike, but Komaeda was a hurting child. He was in more pain than anybody else around him. “Stop that, stop smiling like everything’s okay. You’re in far worse pain then me, but you keep putting my feelings first.”  
  
“Funny. I always think the same about you. That you’re ignoring your own pain to focus on me.”

Was it really so simple.  
Kamukura and Komaeda were both looking at each other. They were both looking at themselves. They were doing both at once. That was right even if he lost sight of himself he still had Komaeda here.

If he bent one way Komaeda would bed the opposite way to match him if he pushed Komaeda would pull, and the moment he started to pull Komaeda would push again. Perhaps it was frustrating, perhaps they would keep these games up until the end of time, but they were both dumb kids after all. Playing games were supposed to be fun.  
  
Komaeda was the first friend he made, that he did not feel like he was worse than. He did not feel better or worse, he just felt like Hinata, he felt like a person as long as he was around him. He could forget about whether he was important to the rest of the world, or whether his actions mattered, as long as he had this loud ball of white fluff to distract him and run around in circles.  
  
Hinata chose to go back to being Kamukura because he wanted a future with those people. Even if he himself was weak, the ties he had made to everyone around him was not. They were stronger than that.  
  
Strong enough to pull him forward into the future when he was the type to sit back and do nothing at all, or even run away the opposite direction.  
  
At that moment, Kamukura stood up again and lifted the child Komaeda onto his back.  
  
“I’m glad I always kept coming back to you countless times. I can’t ever lose you Komaeda, it would be like losing myself.”  
  
He said as he began to walk forward back to the others with the boy on his back. This time, they both grew older at the same time, until Komaeda was wearing his green jacket again, and Hinata had two eyes once more.  
  
“Even if we’re not important people, we became important to each other.” Hinata concluded all on his own.  
  
Komaeda was glad at least, his mad rambling had led him to the right conclusion for once. So he finally had an important person like Yasuke did… he wondered…  
  
Why was he still not happy with it?  
Just one day ago, when Hinata was out of the room of the motel Matsuda had come to talk to him and made sure he was alone at the time. He unfolded a manilla folder in front of him and showed him the x rays that Hitoyoshi’s mother had given him to look over.  
  
“There’s a thing called confirmation bias. Because my mother was affected by a degenrative memory disease in the past, I may have drifted towards that conclusion with you and misdiagnosed you. I’m sorry.”  
  
“There’s no need to apologize, if it’s anybody’s fault it’s probably just my weird brain.”  
  
“Nagito…” Yasuke breathed in for a moment. He looked weak, especially weak, like the times they had argued about whether or not Komaeda would die as a patient under his care or not. He reached up and tapped on his eyeball. “You have a tumor in your brain, right behind your eye here. That might not be responsible for everything, but it’s gotten bigger, big enough that we finally noticed it.”  
  
Komaeda did not know how to react to that news. He only smiled.  
  
“Your worsening vision, your changing symptoms, it could have something to do with that. Hitoyoshi-sensei suspected it and she asked me to confirm. I know literally anybody else besides a shitty guy like me would be better at telling you this but.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I know my bedside manner is atrocious.”  
  
“It’s fine, Yasuke-kun.”  
  
“It’s okay if it’s not fine, Nagito.”  
  
“No really it’s fine.”  
  
“I guess since you have Kamukura the world’s hope on your side he’s going to work really hard to cure it.”  
  
At this Komaeda’s smile widened. He had no idea why. He had been dying for a long time, and recently he had started realizing how much he wanted to live and this news should have crushed him so really he had no idea what he was feeling at the moment.  
  
“I’d rather just not tell Hinata-kun this. If he did know he’d drop everything to focus on me, and if he still failed then he’d spend the rest of his life blaming himself.”  
  
Komaeda lied, even though he did not know who he was lying to. Himself? Matsuda? Hinata?  
  
In the present though, on Kamukura’s back he could not help but question himself. He had gotten so jealous in the past, watching Matsuda’s attempts to save that percious person, wanting to be that important person to Matsuda.  
  
Now he finally had one f his own, but he did not want Kamukura to even bother trying to save him. He did not want the other to know that he could be saved.  
  
Perhaps being someone’s important person was not enough for him.  
Perhaps nothing would be enough.  
He was just not someone who was meant to be happy.  
  
Komaeda sighed with resignation as he rested his face on the slope of Kamukura’s shoulder.  
  
“I used to think that it would be nicer if we had met earlier, but I think it’s enough. It’s enough that we met on that island, that we got close the way we did, I’m glad it happened that way.”  
  
Komaeda said, smiling without realizing it.  
  
“Washing up on a beach, even after we forgot one another and meeting again. It’s like you’re my fated person or something.”


	33. The Boy and the Girl Inside the Coffin

As a narrator I’ve played it tsundere about my opinion on Kumagawa Misogi. By nature he’s a hard person to pin down, that’s like his defining characteristic, take it away and he’s just every other trashy loser on the planet. Also, who would want to admit to spending any time at all thinking about Kumagawa MIsogi.  
  
Despite being such a negative existence that just thinking about him for a few minutes is a clear bummer, I would say his defining trait is not his pessimism like me, or even his despair like Junko. He is a man who has a sincerely optimistic outlook on his own ambitions. He has no reason at all to be optimistic, because of you know the everything about him. He’s incompetent, crass, selfish, and also envious. He was not able to turn his trauma into a single positive trait. He has no talent and his mere presence is a burden to others. Yet, despite having nothing at all inside of him, despite the sum of his parts amounting to nothing, he is optimistic, spitefully so, he takes pride in spite of having nothing, he’s prideful of nothing at all.  
  
Others born into circumstances such as him might bemoan their circumstances and believe themselves to be neither here nor there. But this man uses his double nature do his advantage, he’s a clever human using his wits to trick others into hope, and he’s a violent human willing to commit all kinds of wrongdoing to drag others into despair.  
  
Wrongdoing might not be the correct word to use, as Kumagawa genuinely does not perceive his actions as good or evil. Unlike Junko and myself, Kumagawa’s heart might be the farthest gone, because everything down to his perception has been twisted about. He’s not swayed by hope or despair, such binaries don’t even occur to him, he only acts as his emotions propel him to in the moment.  
  
That’s why his actions sometimes look completely stupid, and his plans shoddy and haphazard. However, Kumagawa’s nature is diametrically opposed to Junko who even against her own wishes when she carries a plan out carries it all the way out to perfection one hundred percent without abandoning it. Despite craving a win more than anyone else, even if his plan were to be carried ninety percent of the way to perfection, he is the kind of man who would abandon it without a second thought if it didn’t achieve his desired outcome. Even in this incident I am about to disclose to you, he behaved in extremely irrational ways - all for the sake of spiting others.  
  
Despite the fact that all he does is cause trouble for others, and I’m one of the people who gets dragged further into despair with him by his actions, I am personally quite fond of his pettiness. It might be the only part of him I like.  
  
His smile pisses me off because it’s fake, his kindness pisses me off because someone like him looking down on others is just a farce, and how protective he is of those weaker like himself reminds me we have something in common which makes me hate him even more, but I like his pettiness. Admitting I like something about Kumagawa, how gross.

The petty villain is the kind of man who grows and matures. He is a match for most heroes in his will to see through everything to the end, but he could never become as reat as them. He’ll always lose in the end. And that’s why it’s so easy to develop a soft spot for him, the most noble of petty villains, the man who will never give up on his ideals.

That’s why even when he looks like he’s given up, I won’t believe him. Even when he looks at his lowest point, when he’s finally given into his misery, I’ll just laugh at him, because like he says he’s always got lower to fall.  
  
It seems as a narrator I have a habit of long introductions, pardon that it’s just I’m a pretentious ass. I’m sure the next narrator will do a better job because my time is almost up. This fake love story is almost over anyway, as we reach the climax remember the worthless bond between the petty crook, the mastermind, and the idiot accomplice to them both (that’s me, Matsuda).  
  
As for why Enoshima Junko, the last boss amongst last bosses, the arch enemy, the classic mastermind, why she would fall for nothing more than a petty crook in this love story. It’s tragic, because no matter how strong their love is they can never change for one another. They’re fundamentally on different levels. It’s comedic because such a mastermind falling for a petty crook that could be replaced with anyone and found anywhere is exactly what she deserves.

Anyway, even though the actors were supposed to get on stage for the finale, Enoshima was taking a long time in the makeup department. Ruining her makeup the last time we saw them, Junko immediately found a bathroom in the ruins of the building and started to reapply it.  
  
“Junko, literally everybody is going to be dead by the time we catch up with the others because you had to fix your makeup for the second time today, move your ass.”  
  
Yasuke Matsuda called from the outside of the bathroom. She had threatened to gauge his eyes out if he came in after her, to which Yasuke said ‘Good I won’t have to look at your ugly face anymore’ but he had more bark than bite at the moment whereas Junko was all bite so he decided to wait outside.

『...』Kumagawa remained frustratingly silent as always simply awaiting there with a grin on his face.  
  
“Tee hee hee! Hey, you know? Was it hot? That ‘Oh…’ I said when I broke down crying, I mean! Was it hot? Was it _seductive_ ? Do you like miserable girls, Yasuke-kun?” The moment Junko returned to them with her face painted back on, she was back to being annoying.  
  
“I don’t like anything, let’s get on with this already.”

『Well, I think Junko’s smiling face is the best, so if you were laughing while crying that’d be the best!』Kumagawa picked the weirdest times to be strangely honest. 『Oh, but she’d probably have to go insane to show me that kind of face so that’s no good.』  
  
“Why are you wasting time putting on makeup anyway, we both know what you look like without makeup.”  
  
“Are you about to say I look prettier even without makeup on? You just think that because you have bad taste…”  
  
“I think you’re so ugly even makeup can’t save you.”

『Yasuke-chan! Junko’s makeup is like her mask, it’s the part of herself that she shows to the world. Even if she’s not a natural beauty, I think she’s prettiest when she’s wearing her mask. That fake part of Junko, that effort she puts into performing it, that makes it real.』  
  
For a liar he was strangely sincere. As he said that Junko’s face brightened up, even her dull and doll like cheeks finally gained some color as they reddened, like _finally someone gets it._

Her shoulders shook indecisively for a moemnt and she played with her fingers, before her personality changed into something cuter grabbing her cheeks in both hands she got in his face and suddenly asked him.  
“Am I cute?”  
『Yeah, you are..』  
  
“Am I stimulating?”  
『Yeah, you are.』

“Am I sexy?”  
『Yeah, you are.』  
  
“Am I titillating?”  
『Yeah, you are.』

“Am I sensual?”  
『Yeah, you are.』  
  
“Am I erotic?”  
『Yeah you are.』

“Am I lustful?”  
『Yeah, you are.』

  
Junko liked to unnerve people, it was a little game she played, one of many even. Kumagawa was too had to throw off though, they were on the same wavelength, and so even when she was clearly messing with him he just kept responding in earnest.  
  
“You’re just agreeing to everything I say, what do you think is the true me?”

『That’s easy, every you is the true you. Ryoko-chan, Crude, Tsundere, Cute, Cool, Mastermind, every single face you put on is you. No matter what it’s all just you in the end.』  
  
He said holding onto his foolish idea with a fool’s conviction.  
  
Junko was the first to back off, suddenly changing tracks again.”Ehhhh? Why am I suddenly asking all of this out of some loser? Who cares about the opinion of a nobody?”  
  
Clearly you do, Junko that was why you were asking. Dumb bitch.  
Matsuda decided to hang a step back so those two, the boy and the girl could walk together on the same path. He had gotten in the way so many times before this after all, and he was an expert at third wheeling by now.  
If you want to die tomorrow, then I’ll follow you. If you choose to live, I’ll choose to live with you.  
That was the promise the two of them had made together.  
They were walking the same path, but even if that path led to the grave they did not mind it. As long as they could be together, even if it was just lying together in the same coffin. However, for those two who sought to smash the circumstances around them and seize any agency they could, they had gotten comfortable lying in that coffin, limbs overlapped, embracing each other’s corpses.  
  
The boy and the girl looked happy inside the coffin. Even if they had not escaped their roles, even if they were still a petty villain and a mastermind in the end. The girl looked clearly disgruntled. But the boy was positively beaming as always.  
  
『I love you!』He said suddenly. Junko almost tripped over her own heels.  
『Eh, Junko! Are you okay? Clumsy girls aren’t considered moe anymore.』  
  
“You know screw boy I’m starting to wonder if your head isn’t screwed on properly.”

『Awe, you’re worrying about me. Junko finally expressed human compassion.』  
  
“That is not what I meant! You know I’m starting to regret killing Kaiki the way I did, because I did such a half assed job your despair has gone all screwy. What I should have done was given him a proper punishment time, like launched him into space and back and then leave his bones in a gift box for you to discover later.”

『Awe, Junko can express regret now too! Look at you, you’re becoming more human by the second.』

Junko grabbed the collar of his sweater as if shaking his face would make that smile go away, resetting his expression like an etch a sketch.  
  
“Unbelievable, those statements were supposed to make you feel despair.”

『Ah! Ah! Ahahaahaha! I am feeling despair, I promise. Isn’t it obvious from the face I’m making?』  
  
It was not obvious at all. Kumagawa did not seem to understand that. He was just smiling the same as always. 

『Anyway, what’s your answer?』  
  
“I refuse to respond to such cheap confessions of love that I receive at every occasion!” Junko remained an untouchable princess as always, but she did not try to end the conversation. She stopped shaking him and let him go. If she wanted to, she could have gotten rid of him at any moment but she matched his pace and kept following the path through the graveyard together with him.  
  
『Even cheap confessions are worth a lot if you pile them all up.』  
  
“How unfortunate then, because trashy confessions like that from trash like you should get thrown out the moment they’re heard.”

『Ahahahaha, that’s so like you. You really won’t say it, unless you want to hurt me, or you want something out of it. You’re so shy.』  
  
“That’s not being shy, that’s being a manipulative mastermind.”

『Masterminds are just so moe these days don’t you think? People can think villains are just as cute as the heroes.』  
  
“Why are you bugging me so much right now, you insect?”

『Well, if I’m an insect then bugging people is all I know how to do. And, I wanted to hear those words just now.』  
  
She tried to say them, but it made her look like her face was broken. A fake trying to be real, trying to say something real when all she knew was how to be a perfect fake. “Is that so, then I’ll make sure to never say them ever again.”  
She was trying to save face. Ironic considering she did not have one, only a mask.  
  
Kumagawa looked back to Matsuda. 『Do you want to join in? The banter’s getting good, Yasuke-chan.』  
  
“No thank you.”

『Awe, but I wanted to tell Yasuke-chan I loved him too.』  
  
“I want you to go die but we can’t all get what we want. Besides I don’t banter around like you two clowns.”

『You used to banter with Junko all the time!』  
  
“No, I just told Junko to go die, and she refused to die because she’s a bitch like that.”  
  
Junko suddenly leaned tilting her whole body in an odd way inspecting him from the sign. Indecisively, she did not know what she wanted to say or do in response to his sincere, real feelings. If she was indecisive one moment, she became decisive the next grabbing at his arm by twisting her own arms around it. Yanking him forward, possessively, as if to say _mine.  
_  
Her true feelings she would never speak.

 _I was hoping for the ultimate hope to come defeat me, and give me the despair of having all my plans thrown off at the last minute. My only hope was in despair._ _  
_ _But Kumagawa used cheap tricks to save me._ _  
_ _He bluffed his way through the entire time._ _  
_ _He’s the one who helped me, and I thought back then what a petty villain. But as I sat there shaking, Kumagawa laughed at me._ _  
_ _Misoi is a petty villain and a piece of garbage, but that smile he showed me was so wonderful._ _  
_ _The way he smiles with his whole face in defiance of everything, full of emotion._ _  
_ _I wish I could smile like that._ _  
_ _And if I can never smile like that, or feel what he feels, then I just want to see that face again._

She was terrified of those feelings though It was not that she disliked him. She was not even interested or bored of him. But she was scared of accepting someone else into her world—forging a connection to a part of the outside world.  
It felt as though, the moment she made that connection real and became part of the world, her existence itself would be denied.

She thought she was more important than the world.  
But.  
This petty villain, this small crooked thing, he was hers. That was what she thought, the only way she could show those feelings of her.  
But she was mistaken.

You can never truly own a person, they can never be an object, they’ll always remain a person in the end. That was why she failed to understand his true intentions, and why even she let herself get swindled by the petty crook. She was still failing to see him as a person.

『I love you, Junko!』  
He said again, but he said it like he was mocking her.

 

😈

 

 _“_ This is what you call a little kid Loli-bye! Thank you for lishtening quietly as the grown ups you are.”  
  
Junko B said, letting his tongue lhang out of his mouth as he spoke. He had a distinct, and weird laugh like the original Junko, but it sounded more like the sound a snake would make as it’s belly slid across the ground. “Nishishi! Nishishishishi!”  
  
“Gh…! You…! Pun user! You’re the lowest of the low.” Middle school age Medaka cried out in frustration. Just to be clear, the kanji for listening quietly, and growing up are the same. “You circumvented the corridor and got us from behind.”  
  
“Daa! Daa daa daaa!”  
  
Just then Hitoyoshi Zenkichi who had gone chasing after SHiranui appeared in between middle school age Medaka, and Fake Junko B looking like nothing more than an infant.  
  
“Zenkichi…”  
  
Junko B leaned forward and picked Zenkichi up, holding him against his face covered in make up and a wig. “Babies are sho cute. Sho little, sho soft, sho warm and full of life. They’re so easy to trick, they’re just sho damn cute.” He brought out a lollipop to hold it in front of Zenkichi’s face, only to snatch it away at last minute.  
  
“Did you literally just, steal candy from a baby.” Medaka expressed in shock. Whoever this was pretending to be Junko, they might even be a more petty criminal than her favorite crook Kumagawa.  
  
Then the next moment she was gone. “She just ran away. If I leave to chase her, Kichi-kun will go back to his normal self. You’ve become a lot more strategic, did you urge her to do that? Even as a baby you don’t change you’ve always been Medaka-chan’s friend haven’t you?”

“Haaah. Haaah. I guess I managed to hide because of my size as a middle schooler but this is the first time I’ve been humiliated like this.” Medaka had hidden herself in the vents. “I kurokami Medaka, after being forced to repeatedly leave my ocrades behind these past two days, got cornered in a narrow place like this…”  
  
When she had run after to find the source the noise, she only discovered a cell phone playing the same pre-recorded song.  
  
“She used her cell phone to trick me… I’ve been carelessl. Now that I think about it, it was easy to understand. Did I have the brain of a two year old too?”  
She was glad she was alone monologueing to herself because if Junko or Kumagawa had been there they would have pounced on her and never let her escape with her life, they would have relentlessly teased her to death.  
  
Still, as someone who was supposed to be the strongest, peerless, she had done nothing but lose lately and fail to protect her friends. That was what she lived for and yet, she was failing again and again. At the same time though, it was the first time she had felt like she was getting along with those friends. This absurd series of battles to try to get Shiranui back, it was a little bit like they were all skipping school to go on a roadtrip to her. She never thought she would get to experience such rose tinted youthful memories.  
  
What really surprised her was not ‘the trick with the cell phone’ but rather the fact that ‘the cell phone was the trick’. It was a prank that should not have worked. Usually, a device made for conmmunication like a cell phone cuts out the frequencies outside those belonging to a human voice to allow for a comfortable call. In other words, with a cell phone the ultra sonic and infra sonic waves wouldn’t be able to be heard, but this style user had simply disregarded the law of physics. In fact he pranked them.  
  
She had followed the initial source of the attack, only to find it was a cell phone singing and then nearly been attacked fro behind, and when she doubled back Zenkichi was already taken hostage.  
  
At all of this Kurokami Medaka smiled. “However, I accept your challenge. I’ll defeat you and make it look as easy as taking candy from a baby!” Apparently she was just as petty as the person she was facing. Whoever they were behind the mask.  
  
_Okay brain, think of the solution at last minute like you always do._ Medaka quietly tried to think for five seconds, at which point she immediately lost patience. _Why did that not work, that usually does!_ _  
_ _  
_ Before she could finish thinking suddenly a grenade appeared before her eyes. Medaka braced herself thinking this was the end, but then suddenly the grenade exploded into- body glitter and confetti that got everywhere.  
  
Outside of the vent, the other Junko laughed. “Haha, you’ve been defeated for all time.’  
  
“This isn’t a defeat this is just annoying.”  
  
“Haha, you’ve been annoyed for all time.”  
  
Imitating Junko like that, “That person is crazy. Why would anyone willingly want to act like Junko anyway? Well, if this person is acting like Junko maybe I can undermine them that way. It sure is handy to have some strong enemies.”  She shouted out the one thing she knew Junko would never do. “Take this seriously already!”

“Never!” The fake Junko B yelled back as he took Zenkichi hostage, and threatened him with a rubber chicken.  
  
“Gh… Tch…” Her fingers rolled into a fist. These fights were so absurd, ever since Junko had met Kumagawa it seemed like her life had gone way off track. The old her would have never been troubled by fights like this, she was told over and over again. She was sick of loving humans from a distance though, she wanted to get close, and because of that things became more and more difficult. “But I get it…. This is the truth form of a style. There’s no way I could have learned it with the end.”  
  
There was no perfect solution to understand others, people were not like formulas that could not be learned by memorizing them in a textbook. Because of that, she kept getting cornered again and again. Most importantly, unlike in shonen manga most arguments between people, when their real feelings came out they could not understand each other by punching each other in the face. Medaka agreed it was really disappointing when shonen manga did not resemble reality.  
  
“Now that I think about it… I had already been told this before.” Styles were just a way of conveying one's true feelings of the heart, it was communication, and Medaka was not used to communicating she just stomped all over others to get what she wanted. She remembered though a long time ago when her and Kamukura were watching the school festival together the two of them had broken out into tears, real feelings had come across in that song.  
  
“I started crying all of a sudden. I think I could have just been moved to tears, but on the other hand it seems my performance lacked passion. THis may look like I’m just boasting but, with all due respect I don’t think my technique was defective so what exactly did my “Sound Lack…?”  
  
A perfect recreation. She had perfectly copied the music on the sheet, and yet that perfect recreation still lacked something.  
  
Saki sipped her drink loud and rude for a moment as she thought it over. “Nn… umm… Still, you sure worry about some good things, girl. Ah, youth!” As she said that, she revealed a razor sharp smile.  
  
“Ah… yeah. I’m sorry.” Medaka knew she always came off as a bit naive.  
  
“It’s the same for you and Kamukura isn’t it, you have every talent so it doesn't make much sense that you’re below average in the arts field. Well maybe it’s not art… it’s communication.” Saki finally said, scowling that the answer that had taken her so long to grasp was something so simple. “Well I think there’s no such thing as perfect communication, just like there’s no perfect song that’s gonna reach everyone but even it’s it’s incomplete or not perfect, it’s something that lets us shiver, cry and feel with everyone.”

Just then, Kurokami Medaka pierced her way through the floor. She had not teleported or anything, she simply had started to punch the vent until she tumbled down and pierced straight through the walls, and then the floor to come up like a drill.  
  
“Whaaaa? That’s cheating! But go ahead I still have Zenkichi.”  
  
Medaka hesitated, seeing the careful way he was holding Zenkichi. “You bastard… is that something an adult would do?”  
  
“What? Calling me an adult? That's such a monstrous thing to call someone.” He said, genuinely offended. All Medaka could make out of the false Junko was his smile, as he leveled a gun at her. Everything else about his appearance was fake, just a costume he was wearing.

 _Don’t do it perfectly  There’s no way to do it perfectly, no matter what you’ll still be misunderstood. And yet._ That perfectionist girl closed her eyes and started to try to sing. “My godly toybox, it’s locked and it won’t open. The secret demon toybox, what’s inside it I don’t know.”  
  
A song that reminded her of Anshin’in-san. Her friend who had died. Her friend who saw the world as a toybox. Well that was fine, it was a bit condescending but at least that meant that the world was fun to her.  
  
“If I strike it, it makes a good sound but, I don’t believe it’s empty. Before I know, I played all day. My troublesome toybox has so many memories inside it, oh toybox steeped in me, many memories come out of it.”  
  
“Like I’ll let you learn a style!” Junko B said as he raised a gun and leveld it at her, when he pulled the trigger though the only thing that came out was a small flag that said _bang!_ “Just kidding.”  
  
He said right before Medaka’s fist plunged into him, he flew back into the air. Zenkichi flew out of his arms, and Medaka caught the fully grown Zenkichi bridal style. “It wasn’t really like taking candy from a baby, but let me say this anyway, sleepy my baby!”  
  
“Oh man that’s such a cool line.” Zenkichi said, fangirling over his childhood friend/girlfriend/whatever they were right now, “Ugh why didn’t I say it? I’ve just been useless this entire time I haven’t gotten to look cool once.”  
  
Medaka noticed that in the force of her blow, the wig of the fake Junko had fallen off. She tilted her head to the side looking at the boy on the ground, his tongue still hanging out. “I believe the real Junko would say, wig, right now.”  
  
“Please don’t imitate her, that’s scary.” Zenkichi begged.

“Nishishishishi.” At his defeat though, that boy only laughed.  
  
“I was surprised it was you.” Medaka said.  
  
“Really, senpai? I thought you’d be able to predict that I of all people would turn out to be a fake.” His tongue still hanging out he flitted it about liek a snake looking at them. “I’m not the mastermind or anything though, I’m just a cheap knock off. In fact any one of us can do something as simple as dress up like Junko. It’s not that hard. She’s like, the most cosplayed character in the whole world.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s nonsense answer me straight. How many of you are there, and whose the original.”  
  
“I don’t do anything straight!” That boy said shaking his head. “As for how many there are, sixteen, no umm… maybe fifty two or fifty three. Who knows. It’s not like we’re significant enough to have numbers anyway, we’re all just replacements and replacements of replacements.”  
  
“But that’s just a lie isn’t it?”  
  
“Oh you’re learning, good, good! I think you’ve gotten better at understanding the feeling of others, you used the weak point of Junko to incite her into actually bothering to help, you might even understand the basics the basics now but, monsters are monsters, and like father like son. You should get that now shouldn’t you, that there was no hope for you to begin with?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You understood the feelings of other people yes, but you don’t understand the feelings of the people closest to you. For example, that boy in your arms has felt useless this whole adventure, he’s just been taken hostage, beat up, and tossed around the entire time.”  
  
In her arms Zenkichi started to throw a tantrum. “Shut up! I’m the one whose going to save Shiranui, I’ll show you all how big my friendship with Shiranui is!”  
  
“You say that but you’ve been thinking this entire time, _do I really deserve to be by Medaka’s side?_ And _I don’t think I’ll last by Medaka’s side much longer once this is over._ You’ve hit your wall, hard work boy. Juzo smashed you down real good and your confidence has been shaken since then and you didn’t even notice. Even if he’s in your arms, he might as well be far away from you. You didn’t understand Zenkichi’s feelings, and you didn’t understand Shiranui’s as well, no matter how many times she tells you she doesn’t want you to save her.”  
  
At that point he sucked in a big breath and yelled out. “Hey, Shiranui it’s time to come out now!”

At that moment Shiranui suddenly appeared and hugged her from behind. Medaka could not help but soften.  
  
“...Shiranui.”  
  
“It’s over now, Medaka-chan. This battle is definitely my win.” Shiranui said, as she pierced Medaka right from behind. All that girl could do was topple forward, the base of her spine had been pierced and there was not much left to do but collapse.  
  
“We weren’t kidnapping your friend. We were just using her as bait. Hey, hey, how do you get the main character of a video game to chase you to the ends of the earth? It’s the simplest thing ever, you just kidnap their princess. No matter how many times she told you to stop trying to save her, we knew an idiot hero like you who fights for her friends would keep following her even if it was to your own grave.”  
  
It was a trap.  
A reckless author like fake Junko, cared very little about her character’s agency. She would even drag the characters to the final scene if necessary, as long as she got to perform the scene she wanted in reality exactly as written, a perfect recreation.

“You really say some cruel things.” Medaka said as she lay on the ground twisting her head to look up at the defeated Junko.  
  
“I do, I do, I say these cruel things because I’m human, you damn monster.” As he said that he stood up and stretched his body. He picked up the wig that had fallen off of him and put it on his head once more, otherwise the boss would yell at him and he hated being lectured.  
  
As he took a step forward, Zenkichi from the ground wrapped his arms around him. “What do you think you’re doing? I’m still here!”  
  
“You can’t do anything without Medaka-chan, without her you just become an idiot who tries too hard.” Junko B said as he drove his heel into Zenkichi’s face, and stomp, stomp, stomped, not wanting to be shown such a sincere expression from that boy.  
  
Medaka, even with her spine fractured like that figured out how to move. She threw herself around Shiranui as well. “Shiranui please, come back, you’re… you’re my friend.” Shiranui hesitated as he saw Medaka’s bloodied hands, desperately grabbing and twisting up the fabric of her dress. “Don’t leave like that! If you have to say goodbye, that’s fine! If you’re going to betray me that’s fine! But do it to my face! Don’t just run of and disappear because you think cutting all ties like that will be easier! Just talk to me please, even if you have nothing but harsh words for me I’ll listen. You’re just being bashful, if people… if people never talk… then no stories can be told.”  
  
Shiranui looked at the girl holding onto her. Right, that was what she had been doing. She was unable to betray her past friends, but at the same time she did not want to face her feelings for her current friends. She did not want to be forced to choose, so instead she chose neither. She ran away, and told lie after lie until she reached this point.  
  
Now all that was left for her was awful choices. Her friends from the past were awful people, they had been responsible for all this destruction, they were certainly the villains fo this story. Her current friends were the heroes, if she took their side right now she would be forgiven. They might even all have a happy ending.  
  
“I don’t… I don’t know…”  
  
“That’s fine! Can’t you be friends with both? Isn’t there an ending where we all get along happily? Isn’t that still possible? Did you ever once think you could be happy before you ran away?"

A happy ending.  
She did not think she was deserving of such a thing. Just like she did not think she could be forgiven.  
  
“Thank you Medaka-chan, I lost myself behind my mask but now I remember who I really am because of you. I remembered I was… just a bad person.” Shiranui shook herself free, and then looked back at the hand that was still clenched around her ankle. “Stop with that disgusting act!! Why won’t you just accept your defeat! Give up, monster! You monster, you monster, you monster, you monster, it is you who lost!”  
  
As she said that Shiranui stomped on her hand again and again trying to force her to let go. She was only stopped by Junko B putting a hand on her shoulder. He already had Zenkichi thrown over his shoulder.  
  
“Sode-chan that’s enough. Let’s just go to the finale already.”  
  
_You should take more care of your toys. You won’t get to play with them anymore if they break._ That boy whispered in her ear with an impish grin. Together, the two of them dragged the unmoving Medaka forward.  
  
Medaka was afraid of losing things to. She was afraid if she lost those friends to fight for, she would become a monster, no better than Enoshima Junko, or Ajimu Najimi. That she would be empty. That was why she would not let go no matter what. That was the flaw they exploited.  
If you don’t have other humans around you, you cease to be human. No one was more aware of that than Kurokami Medaka.

 

😈

 

Kamukura Izuru carrying Komaeda on his back noticed that the aging fluctuations had stopped. He breathed a sigh of relief just for a moment, only to see there were sixteen masked figures surrounding him. _Jeez, even with every talent why can’t I make anything go right?_ Hajime’s voice complained in his head for a moment. _How lame._ Apparently he had forgotten that Kumagawa dubbed him the most minus of all minuses.  
  
However, even with Komaeda on his back, against sixteen assembled super geniuses who were all raised from birth to cultivate their talents, Kamukura defeated them all instantly. It was not even worth the prose to describe how he had done so. As Kamukura would say, it would be boring to read through.  
  
He weaved in and out of the shadows, and touched them all on the back once and they all collapsed to the ground like their strings had been cut. Hinata turned his head back looking to see one of them had snuck behind him. They raised a wrench far above their head.  
  
Before they could swing it own, Kamukura was behind him again. He thought that this was a bit of a cheap move, going aha, you snuck up to me from behind only to realize I was behind you all along! He was glad Iihiko who could step in shadows in the exact same way was not here at this moment, otherwise this might turn into an entire chain combo of aha, you thought you snuck up on me but I snuck up on you, aha, you thought that I thought that you snuck up on me but actually I snuck up on you.  
  
That would not only be boring to read, it would be boring to narrate. As he struck hard in the boy’s back with a flat palm the boy crashed into the ground face first, his mask falling off of him. They all wore the same mask, a blank expressionless mask with nothing on it, like they were a bunch of no-faces. As Kamukura saw a flash of pink hair, and a smile full of sharpened fangs the boy’s face revealed himself.  
  
“Souda…?”  
  
“Oh, you love your friends sooooo much now prettyboy. But you forgot one of them.” Izuru heard a perfect imitation of Junko’s voice come from the room behind him, he knew it was just an imitation though because it did not annoy him nearly as much as the original. Before she could finish her sentence, he appeared and slammed his foot hard into her face knocking her to the floor.  
  
“It doesn’t matter if you took him. I’ll take him back.”  
  
“Taking him back? He’s not your possession. That’s why you’d make a terrible author. Kamukura-senpaiiiiii! You don’t respect your character’s agency at all.”  
  
“Okay. So your gimmick is you think you’re an author. Whatever. Fake of a fake, call Iihiko so I can end this here.”

He raised his foot once more, but before he could even do that, he noticed there were red strings tied to each of her fingers. As she pulled on them and stuck her tongue out, suddenly the person he was stomping on was not Enoshima Junko but rather Nanami Chiaki.  
  
Kamukura hesitated.  
  
“Are you going to kill me again, HInata?”

“Rrrrrkkk..”  
  
“Hey, enjoy that shot of emotion. It’s on the house.” Chiaki’s face smiled at him but the mockery of Junko’s voice came out of it.  
  
“If you can change disuises this quickly, then you must be the original. The most perfect copy.”  
  
“Yep, I was able to achieve what Junko never could. I can make all of my followers perfect imitate me, and despair in the exact same way as me.”  
  
“Everybody exactly the same? How boring.”  
  
“Hey, hey, Kamukura-senpai I bet if I had transformed into Komaeda-senpai you wouldn’t hesitate to kick me at all.”  
  
At that moment Kamukura gave into his violent impulse and stomped on her once more. That only made her laugh, and slap her hand on the ground still imitating Junko’s mannerisms perfectly as she wore Chiaki’s body to do it.  
  
“I’ve always been a big fan of yours, so I came down to meet you in person, you raved haired, crimson eyed god.”  
  
“They call fans like you stalkers. No thank you.”  
  
“Oooh, you’re doing it. The cold blooded snarky retorts I love it! You think you’re so in control but the thing is, Kamukura daaaaarling no one person should claim a monopoly on despair It belongs to everyone!”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“Come on don’t you notice the parallels I’m trying to set up.” She tugged her strings again, and then in the next moment Junko was underneath his foot once more. He looked around him and saw an abandoned hospital room, completely barren except for one single bed without even a sheet on it. He recognized this room, the same room he had in the old school building. “Here’s what I believe, people can’t change, their characters are written in their formative years and they spend the rest of their lives playing that part.”  
  
“Hinata-kun…. It’s a trap….” Komaeda murmured looking up from his back.  
  
“Oh, even that talentless trash is smarter than you it seems.” Junko said, a mockery of a smile on her lips.  
  
“What are you trying to say? Even if I’m strong my heart is weak and I’m easily swayed, I already know that but… I already chose hope over despair a long time ago.”  
  
“That’s exactly it, first you chose despair, and then when you got bored of it you chose hope. Doesn’t that mean the choice is arbitrary. Besides don’t act like you chose hope for everyone, what you chose was hope for your small group of friends. It’s those ties who keep you who you are.”  
  
“Hinata-kun… You have to run away. It’s okay to run away this time.” Komaeda kept murmuring.  
  
Hinata had no idea though what was coming next. Komaeda always seemed to figure things out ahead of time, even with Junko’s analysis causing one of his eyes to glow bright red he could not see what was in front of him.  
  
“Uuuugh it takes you forever to reach the simplest conclusions. Whatever. I’m bored of acting out this parallel. Next scene.” Suddenly strings wrapped around his ankle, pulling him and causing him to trip and let go of Komaeda. The boy spilled out on the floor. Even as he fell, he reached out for him but he fell away too far and could not reach him in time. Junko stood up once more, and as Kamukura raised his eyes he saw her boots looming over him. She stopped one moment to fiddle with her phone, until a loud ringtone started to play through the speakers. _Opera music?_ It took him a moment to recognize it because the arts were his weak point. “Yeah, like here’s the deal. Komaeda-senpai totes has a fatal brain tumor. So like, come to our side or your precious little friend there will die. Oh, and of course I’ll give Souda back as well.”

Kamukura had no response. His brain refused to process what he had just heard. It wanted to exit his skull, he wanted to leave his flesh behind and run away from this moment. The more he thought about it though the more it made sense, Komaeda’s constantly changing medication, Hitoyoshi-sensei spending all that time with him and even calling in Matsuda to help with his treatment, Komaeda needing to wear glasses suddenly, his avoidance of cigarettes.  
  
He had not changed at all. Just like the time on Jabberwock, Komaeda easily hid his sickness away from him. He had been telling a terminally ill boy, live, live, live, all over again without thinking about how he felt. He was not thinking at all about Komaeda, only himself, and that was why he had failed to notice. Even with all the smarts downloaded into his brain, he did not notice things until people spelled it out for him. Even with all the talent in the world he could not do a single thing for others. The ultimate minus, Izuru Kamukura.

It was at that moment he recognized the song playing over Junko’s smartphone. Faust. How pretentious an allusion to make at this time. She wrapped her arm around her waist and took a bow right then. “I’ll serve you in this life, and you serve me in the next one. Oh, but you’ve lived several lives haven’t you, so no biggie right?”

“...What are you saying?”  
  
“Gosh, after all this time you’re literally only good for asking dumb questions aren’t you Hinata-kun? The technology I stole from Fukurou, and from the Shiranui village surpasses anything Hope’s Peak, or even Sandbox is capable of. You’re not going to face the final boss, you won’t have your rematch against Iihiko, right here right now you’re going to betray all the rest of your little friends and hand Komaeda-senpai over to me so I can cure his cancer. That’s the roel I wrote out for you.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Don’t you think that’s a twist? Aren’t you getting all sorts of feels? That’s just what you wanted, to feel things again right?”  
  
“There’s no way I can trust you’ll follow through on your end.”

“Hmmm, well think of it this way. You can always just take your chances with your own research, I’m sure if you defeat me here then you can spend the rest of Komaeda-senpai’s short life trying to cure him while he begs you not to. That might work out. The question is then, who do you trust more, me, or yourself?”  
  
She phrased it in the most devastating way possible. Kamukura’s eyes of two different colors broke, like someone had grabbed colorful marbles and thrown them on the ground to shatter them. The two halves of his face looked like he might fall apart.  
  
That was it, wasn’t it?  
She had summed up the truth in that one line. He had so little faith in himself, that he would trust a villain more than he did himself.  
Kamukura covered his face with one hand, hiding his shattered eyes not wanting to look at what he was about to do. “What do you need me to do?”  
  
“The same thing you always do, hunkules! Nothing!” She smiled that sickly smile of hers. “Just stand there looking pretty.”

“Fine. Okay. Whatever. Just, promise me…”  
  
At that moment, the Nisenoeshima snapped. Kamukura got a face full of her knock off boots, as she drove the heel right into his forehead. “What? I don’t hear a please. Go on, say it!”  
  
“Please, let me lie to all my friends for you.”  
  
“Honey, glaring at me like that isn’t going to do a damn thing. You can’t expect people to cower at the sight of your fangs after you’ve fallen from lone wolf to lovelorn ingenue! Now come on, go betray the man you’re gaga for for me.”  
  
She lifted her boot finally. Kamukura saw Komaeda on the ground. The moment he stood up and walked over to him he knew exactly what the other would say. He sat on the others hip and looked at the boy in the eye, he felt like he was sitting on a corpse, or a discarded mannequin rather than another boy his same age. There was something particularly empty looking about his body in that moment.  
  
“I’m not worth it.” Komaeda said. He had a tendency to babble, but in that moment when he knew it was important he tried to convey his feelings as clearly as he could. _Please, please, please, understand me just this once. I don’t care if I die here, or if I spend the rest of my life suffering slowly only to die without any hope. Just please, just for this one moment, if I can be understood it will make my whole life worth it._ _  
_

“I’m sure if the situation were reversed. I would say the exact same thing.”  
  
“Stop it. If that’s the case, if we really are the same, then I know, that you know, that this is wrong.”  
  
Even as he begged at the altar though it was no good. He saw gods hands reaching towards him. Those hands made him so happy usually. They were rough, and covered in scars from the many operations that Hinata had gone through. Even if Kamukura considered himself a fake, a person with identity, Komaeda would always know, from the way those rough hands held him, hands that were experts at manipulating, that could solve any puzzle, defeat any enemy, yet hands that were completely inexperienced and had no idea how to hold another. He would always know that those hands belonged to Hinata.  
  
Those hands slowly wrapped around his neck. Just like the last time when he told him he did not want to forget about Kamukura, and he lovingly caressed his neck to make him sleep. It seemed that for all of their fighting, all of their back and forth, they had not changed a single bit from back then. A war of attrition where neither side gained a single centimeter of land.  
  
He wanted to beg more. He was fine grabbing a knife and ripping himself open on the altar of his god. He was a lamb from the beginning, and not only that but a dysfunctional sheep that did not fit in with the rest of the pack. He was the kind that was left behind, isolated, that wolves picked off when the rest of the flock was not looking. He was sickly, and weak, and he had been dying for a long time now so he did not mind. He did not even need to be a sacrifice for the greatest hope anymore. If the boy named Hinata Hajime, could keep living true to himself, not to hope but to himself because he met Komaeda, because he let go of him in this moment if he was not forced to do these terrible things Komaeda was fine.  
  
He had been thinking about it for a long time on his own, and maybe somebody to hold his hand as he passed away slowly was the kind of simple thing he desired. He did not need somebody to grab his neck and choke him to save him. He was okay with not being saved, he had never been saved once. He wanted to beg god for a miracle in this moment. He spent his whole life waiting for hope after all, he did everything he could in the name of hope, he sacrificed everything, so please could he see that hope. Just once. Not even for himself, for Hinata.  
  
“Please, please, please, don’t do this. I was really happy. Having just met you. Hinata-kun.”  
  
“I was happy to meet you too, Nagito. And the next time I meet you again, that me will be just as happy too.”  
  
Hinata was immovable. He really was like a god, human words failed to reach him. Had they been this divided from the start. As black ate away at the edges of Komaeda’s vision, tears welled in the corners of his eyes. _Why…?I wasn’t born to spend my whole life suffering._ THISISNTHAPPENING. THISISNTREAL. THISWONTHAPPEN. NOTTHISWAY. NOTTHIS ENDING. THISENDINGISN’THOPE. HINATAISMYHOPE. HEWONTDOTHIS. WHEREIS. WHEREIS. WHEREIS.  THISISNTREAL. THISCANTEND THISWAY. THERESNOHOPE. 

Komaeda Nagito lost consciousness. Staring at his empty hands lacking anything to hold now, Kamukura stood up once more facing the fake Junko. “You… you don’t care about hope or despair. So what is it that you desire? What are you getting out of this?”  
  
“You trying to trick me into monologuing?” SHe had turned her back to him then, and then suddenly tilted her head back over his shoulder to look back. “Reality check, you have no idea son. My motive could be anything. In fact, I was so busy writing everybody else’s characters I forgot to write my own, oh no, plot twist! I guess I have no motive.”  
  
“...”  
  
“That was a joke you’re supposed to laugh.”  
  
“Ha. ha. Extra ha.”  
  
“Gosh this is really like talking with that lame Iihiko. You’re lucky your such an iconic character that I’m wasting my time on this. Hmmm, I guess if I had to say. One day I woke up and realized. I hate this world. The world is just a number of pre-scripted roles, people twist their bodies and enter their own roles, they perform them to the best of their abilities. They live their whole lives putting on an act, and they forget. They forget the form they once had. They forget what they liked. Who they liked. That’s why, I’m the one who’s going to break free from their role. I’ll tear up this script and rewrite it how I please. I’m the chosen one. That’s why I’m going to destroy the world.”  
  
“You’re breaking free from your role by… pretending to be someone else?”  
  
“Yep! It doesn’t need to make sense. You’re so uptight! A real stick in the mud! Don’t you ever get tired of being a hero? It’s so much easier when you know you’re the bad guy, you know? What ever you do, you can just pass  it off with ‘Because I’m the bad guy’ you know? Acting crazy is easy, too. You can just pass off anything you do with, ‘Because I’m crazy.’ Oh, but justice works the same way, too. Oh, but hope works the same way too! Oh, but despair works the same way too!”

Because this world is entirely meaningless.  
That is what the old Kamukura would have said in this moment witnessing such a scene. Enoshima danced away from him, leaving him behind. She clapped her head above her head, and spun away on the heels of her boots like a ballerina. Then, she clapped her hands together, twice more.  
  
“Yup! Hey, hey! Couldn’t you like, go die already? Well whatever, I don’t care, you’re not a player in this script anymore.”

As she left, the followers in the no-face masks contorted their bodies broken bodies forcing themselves to stand once more like they were being pulled on by puppet’s strings. They followed her mumuring to themselves.  
  
“There wasn’t anything special about me.”  
  
“Actually, I’ve finally acquired power.”  
  
“I’m not going to play villager A now. I’m going to get revenge against a world that said I was insignificant.”

“Look at me, look at me, look at me, please.”  
  
“Humans, aren’t free at all are they? Why is that?”  
  
“ Because their whole lives are scripted out, you can’t choose at all. You can’t choose your parents. You can’t choose what your parents do to you.”  
  
“Then you spend your whole life responding to that. If you spend your whole life coping, then where’s the choice? Not only do you cope with that, you lie to save face, you have to respond to everything around you.”  
  
“Other people’s expectations on them, other people’s feelings, they lie to fit those roles.”  
  
“It’s not like all those lies protect us, they just steal that which is precious from us.”  
  
“Even if someone were right next to us, we can’t even see them they’re too far apart.”

“ We’re all alone, you see. You can’t gain anything at all from a lie. We can’t understand each other with lies.”  
  
“There is no way out, anywhere.”  
  
“No one will save us.”  
  
“Thus, our only choice is to destroy it. The script. The people. The world. That’s what Junko taught us.”  
  
Kamukura stared at the sixteen empty husks, chattering away like a greek chorus. In that moment even behind their masks he knew exactly who was speaking. Hinata Hajime, the boy who just wanted to be special, to stop playing the role of a reserve course student and in order to do that he did not care if he was destroyed, or the world was destroyed.  Even after he saw he had nothing at all to say. In the end he could not even laugh. He felt neither tragic inevitability nor comedic release. As usual, he felt nothing at all. So he did nothing. All that he was capable of.

😈

 

“Even though you’re twins, you can’t be like your sister. She’s all alone because you’re such a disappointment. So, what are you going to do? You’re useless.”

Mukuro smiled at the person imitating her sister. “I’m going to do to the one thing to you that I never could to Junko, because you’re not even the real Junko. I’m going to sock you one good.”  
  
As she said that she readied the knife in her hands.  
At that exact moment she rushed forward, and just as quickly Shuichi threw himself in between them.  
  
“What are you doing?” Junko C asked. “You weren’t scripted to do that. Now everything’s going to go off script this isn’t the time to improvise.”

Three blood drops fell on the ground, Mukuro heard their noise like falling rain. She looked up to see that the Junko she had just charged at had already fled, leaving behind Shuichi who protected her. Well, that was exactly what her undependable, fickle, lazy-ass sister would do so perhaps her Junko impression was not that bad.  
  
For a moment Mukuro’s eyes widened in panic, thinking she had been tricked into killing someone again. However Shuichi grabbed her shoulder just then and lifted himself up using her as a support. Even with blood falling from the corner of his mouth, he smiled at her. A one eyed half smile. A face she would even see in her nightmares.  
  
“I didn’t do that for you. I don’t know why I just did that. My body just moved on it’s own, stupid me. Can you help me walk a little bit? Let’s catch up with the others.”

Mukuro threw his arm over her shoulder, and the two of them walked forward. Shuichi had been ignoring her the whole time to focus on Makoto, but now he was curious. That girl had almost thrown their whole scenario off in one action.”  
  
“Ikusaba Mukuro-chan, what do you want to become?”  
  
“What do I want to be? I don’t really have anything. I’m fine as long as I survive. I don’t even think I deserve that but that’s what I’ve been doing so far.”  
  
She was entirely empty, so why was she…  
She was not Junko’s younger sister anymore, nor was she a girl who killed, she was not Makoto’s hope, nor Junko’s despair, throwing all of those roles away what was she? What could continue to guide her like this.  
She did not even think she was on the redemption path. She thought it was pointless to atone, that she was too far gone.  
Most people only say sorry because they expect to be forgiven, because they want the person who is angry at them to stop being mad, not because they regret what they’ve done.  
She had no reason to, and yet she kept living up until this part.  
Even though her entire appearance screamed minor character, even to her sister. Even though she could not act her way out of a paper bag.  
  
“You’re not the type that knows everything like your sister, but you can accomplish a lot more than her. You can form attachments much more easily than she can too.”  
  
“Are you saying that I’m too dependant.”  
  
“Mukuro-chan, it’s a fact that you live based on the support of those around you. They are keeping you alive. Without your little brother, and little sister’s help, you could have died several times over.”  
  
“I know that. The thing about people is, they can’t live all alone. Even if that’s what I deserve it’s impossible, too many people are attached to me already. Saying I deserve to be alone, and cutting them off, I’d just be trying to look cool like my stupid younger sister and brother.”  
  
She knew that even those two were not alone.  
Kumagawa as much as he claimed to be hated and despised, made friends easily, and at the least he had Makoto and also herself.  
Junko met one other person who was like her, and slowly she began to change. Even though she claimed she was born to do this and that, and she was living solely for the sake of despairing at her death.  
  
“No, you’re wrong. People live all on their own, that’s what you said. They get saved on their own, and they fall into despair on their own. What can’t live on their own are monsters, just like you and me.”  
  
“Shuichi-kun.”  
  
She stopped suddenly looking at his face. She thought Shuichi might be trying to trick him again, but the weak look in his eyes were utterly sincere.

“I don’t have an identity of my own.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I’m sorry I said all those cruel things to you. It’s just I hated you who resembled me so much. You see, she’s my sister too. We’re not even connected by blood, just a step sister. And it’s not like I particularly love her either. But. Every time I think about it I’m just like… Ugh, what a pain. I guess I have to. Because she’s my sister.”

“Shuichi-san, what are you….What were we talking about again?” Mukuro blinked, as if the scenery around her were shifting, and she was witnessing a dream in front of her. The more she looked in Shuichi’s face, the hazier her vision got. He might as well have thrown dust in her eyes.  
  
“Whoa, sorry, sorry, I’m no good at talking. We ended up talking about something weird, huh? You know it was so fun to run away after Kirigiri-san like this on an adventure to go save her, but now it’s not fun at all.”  
  
“Huh.. Why is that?”  
  
“It’s sad being a detective. When we figure out a mystery’s true identity, it ceases to be scary. Mystery novels are like that too. You read them on the edge of your seat, heart racing, because you don’t know who did it. When the mystery is no longer a mystery and the suspects are down to one. Honestly it’s no fun anymore.”  
  
As he started to gesture about, getting overexcited and fanboying again Mukuro heard the familiar sound of blood splashing on the floor and looked back at him with concern. “Be careful, Shuichi-kun. You’re going to rip your wound open worse. Is that what you want?”  
  
“You know what I want? I want all solution scenes to be just one line long. There’s no need to drag out a climax. Hen the true identity is known, the fear and the fun disappear. That’s how things are.”  
  
Mukuro’s younger sister had been obsessed with murder mysteries. That was why she made the killing game resemble a classic whodunnit. Mukuro thought nothing at all about death, but she did like mysteries. Ever since she was young she had read them. At first her sister made her read them so she could understand the tropes of the genre for her future masterminding plans or whatever, but she had come to like them on her own.  
  
The masterminds had always reminded her of her loud mouth sister, so secretly Mukuro had started to admire the heroes. What did she want to become, she knew this was impossible but if she had been born into a different life, if she had not killed so many people, she would like to become a hero like Makoto was. Somebody who solves murders rather than making them.  
  
“Do you really think so?” Mukuro spoke up. “Well, in a mystery novel that might be right but in reality, doesn’t it get scarier after the culprit is caught? Because Junko pops up and rants about despair for two hours after being found out…”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“The real story only begins when you know who you really are. I mean, all the paperwork after the culprit is cught takes way longer, right? Besides you say the true identity but it’s not always going to be correct. There could be a later plot twist if you’re talking mystery novels. And people… people’s true selves… aren’t they more malleable than that, they can change, from page, to page, to page.”  
  
“That may be true. You’ve got me. I was just thinking in terms of finding the body, in the end a body is just a body. The dead can’t change. The living can change. Nothing less from Enoshima-senpai’s older sister.” As he said that, Shuichi slithered out of her grip. He was so smooth it was like he was covered in scales like a snake, and he clutching his side righted his body in front of her. “LIsten, Mukuro-chan. I’ll give you a chance. Stop me here, kill me. And I won’t do what I planned to do next to Naegi-senpai. You know he can never do that, but you can do something he can’t, you can protect him.”

Mukuro raised a gun up at him as if truly considering it for a moment. However, she lowered it just as quickly. “I might have been able to a few minutes ago, but I can’t now. You jumped in front of a person to save them. That means you have loved ones. Even if you’re trying to destroy my loved ones, I can’t do it.”  
  
Shuchi stumbled forward for a moment, grabbing the barrel of the gun and placing it against his forehead. “Mukuro-chan, they may have accepted your true identity, or perhaps they’re amused by it. BUt, the same porbably won’t happen for me. My true identity is unsightly.”  
  
“Mmmm?”  
  
“Why won’t you kill me. Is it because of Makoto’s ideals?”  
  
Mukuro shook her head. She remembered what Kumagawa had told her in the past. 

『You shouldn’t kill others so easily, Mukuro-chan. A human life weighs more than the earth, you know?.』

To somebody such as her who could only kill to achieve her goals, the words were appalling. She had gotten closer and closer to him, but she had not truly acknowledged him until this moment.  
  
Kumagawa MIsogi, he defeated Mukuro's sister, and herself. But she thought that was just due to a magic trick. She thought it was nothing more than bad luck so far that allowed him to thrive. A half rate Komaeda knock off, she barely acknowledged him as a person. He just looked like an idiot who could not get rid of his own softness.

『The world is made up of human lives after all. Without them, there’d be no world. Your world is just your classmates and Junko, it’s a tiny world, but it’s a world nonetheless.』

Kumagawa's eyes.  
His eyes.  
Her brother’s eyes were not hope or despair, nor those of a mere human. They were filled holes, like something had fallen out, or like they saw through everyone.  
The eyes of a rotten fish.  
That boy was neither hope nor despair, he was not talented, but he was not a monster, or a puppet either. His body and his mind were unmistakably human.

Even if she could not understand Kumagawa in that moment, he had his own way of thinking. Her brother was definitely a person. Even if he could not be described in terms of good or evil, he was someone with his own values and he had thought about this enough that he was trying to help her.

『Don’t you think it’s a waste to throw away part of the world like that?』  
  
So, Mukuro decided to stop killing.  
Perhaps because she wanted to understand him better, because she was the only one who noticed as outlandish and hard to understand as Kumagawa was, something like loneliness flitted across Kumagawa’s face as he spoke.  
That was in the past and in the present she told Shuichi.   
  
“My brother is petty, ansty, selfish, boorish, vulgar, rude, violent, petty, proud, arrogant, ready to chop people, awful, petty, and he’s stuck on the past worse than anyone else, but I still think he’s great. That’s why, I want to listen to him and my sister well she’s a lot worse than that. So, if people with all those terrible qualities can have worth, then you must have some too. Those people found someone to care about them, so someone must care about you too.”

Shuichi clicked his tongue as if annoyed.  
Annoyed that she saw anything within him at all when he just declared himself nothing.  
Even though he was a fan of stories, he got annoyed that she said the book was not closed.  
“Mukuro-chan, you know there’s no happy ending awaiting you. Redemption doesn’t exist. You don’t get to be a mass murderer and have a redemption ar. No matter how much you atone in the present it won’t lead to a future. All you have is surviving to the next moment, until one day you’ll just die.”

At this, Mukuro simply smiled at him. “Mmm, you’re probably right. Well, I’m no good at living but I can still try, I can keep living in the present until that day comes. That’s why Shuichi-kun you too... ”

You are a valuable part of this world.  
I can’t just go destroying the world in a tantrum.  
I’m not my sister.  
She wanted to say all of those things, but suddenly a dream caught in her throat and she could only yawn. She had a feeling like she had swallowed a cloud, and was chewing it under her tongue like bubblegum. She would blow bubbles and maybe the words would come out that way.  
  
“It’s wonderful you can say that. I’m jealous.” Shuichi said, and he easily grabbed the gun out of her sleepy hold. He walked behind her easily, and pressed it against the back of her head. He seemed genuinely tempted for a moment, and then as if to say just kidding he pulled it away and shot at the back of her knee instead causing her to fall over.

He emptied out the revolver until there was only one bullet left, and then spun it not observing the results. When he opened the door a panicked Makoto was waiting for him, sitting on a pile of desks.  
  
“Shuichi-kun, I’m glad you’re here. I was scared you guys had gotten lost.”  
  
“Ah, I’m glad to see you too, Naegi-senpai.” Shuichi said with a half smile. "Were you waiting for me? You're such a good boy." 

 

😈

  
“Oh my god, this terrible twist was waiting for us the entire time! It’s. It’s. The nineties!”  
  
Junko said in faux-shock, even dramatizing her reaction by hiding behind Kumagawa. They had opened a room thinking it would lead them to the fourth floor office, only to find there was a woman in her thirties wearing a sweat shirt, loose maroon pants, and running shoes, with a hat turned at an angle on her head in the hip hop style. She had a star necklace hanging from her head, and two phones tucked into her pocket that both moved as she tried to stand up.  
  
Previously, she had been lying on the floor texting her bffs. The room was entirely empty, except for a shougi board that lie in the middle. She tried to look serious and utterly failed at it.  
  
“Hey, JunJun! You must know how these things go, you’re so genre aware. You can’t pass until you defeat me, but I don’t like fightin so let’s play a game instead.”  
  
“Games are more fun.” Junko said as she sat down at the other side of the shougi boad, crossing her legs as she sat.

Immediately, as Izuko raised a hand both boys that were behind her jumped to her side and then held their arms out in front of her.  
  
“Yasu-chin. Did you let Junko manipulate you into protecting her again?”  
  
“No, I’m just going to let her die. She has to live so I can spend the rest of my life hating her.”  
  
“But isn’t that hate exactly what she wants you to feel as well?”  
  
“No, they’re my emotions. Even if it was a stage play, I don’t care anymore, my heart can be moved by fiction too. I was happy being in that stage play.”

“Mmm, mmm… good.” She tilted her head to the side, making waves with her purple hair. “River Bear what about you? You know no matter what you do Junko’s not going to love you the same way you love her, all that selfless devotion is wasted on her.”

『That’s fine with me. You know if you think about it, no two people can love each other exactly the same way,  the exact same amount. People’s feelings are always different that’s what makes them so fun.』  
  
Both of her questions answered flawlessly, Izuko turned to Junko once more. “Well, are you going to play?”  
  
“I don’t know who you are but… If you’re asking me to play games then this must have gotten serious.” As Izuko pulled the cell phones out of her pockets and lined them up in front of her, she saw several pieces of information flash by as Izuko scrolled through them and understood them all at once.  
  
Junko saw them too, and she understood too. She got the feeling, just like when she met Kamukura for the first time. The eyes looking at her were the same eyes as her. Somehow, even though it was impossible, she saw the exact same sky.

Looking at a reflection in front of her, Junko only thought. _How tedious._ She was utterly bored of herself, copies of herself, versions of herself, she was so worn out on herself at this point, she just wanted it to be over. She lined the pieces up on her side of the board.  
  
She was tired of that head of hers. A girl was found murdred. Her head and face was struck in again, and again, until both of them caved in. She wanted to strike the person in ront of her with her bare hands. To feel the warmth of the skin as she hit.  
Again. Again. Again. She wanted to destroy what was in front of her, that was why she started playing the game.  
  
“I suppose what’s gotten pretty serious would be… Ajimu’s death. To think she would be targeted, really, it was unexpected. Even for me.”  
  
Junko glared up for a moment as she made her move on the board. “You seem like the type that’s able to expect anything. You know everything, don’t you?”  
  
“Now, now, what’s with that sarcasm towards me? We’re like, totally the same. We should be bffs and text.” Flippantly, Izuko waved her hand. “As for why Ajimu Najimi was eliminated it was simple. She was in the way. As long as she was around, characters death wouldn’t stick.”  
  
“Things are no fun if there aren’t lives on the line.”  
  
“Yep, yep, stupid logic like that. That was the reason your beloved older sister had to die, River Bear. I know you think Ajimu Najimi was getting in your way but really, she was protecting you from assassination just like those two boys were. But those two protectors of yours are useless. They're idiots who will try to protect everybody. I can't get behind that philosophy. As a comparison, it’s almost as abursd as trying to win in shogi without having any of your pieces taken. Ell oh ell.”

As Izuko said that, she captured one of Junko’s pieces. Junko realized right now they were using a custom set, people’s names had been carved into each and every wooden piece. The piece Izuko picked up had _dead tree_ or Kaiki carved into it. Then, Izuko threw it away flippantly.  
  
“Even if you’re a proud, passionate commander, there are still pieces that must be sacrificed.”  
  
“If you try to protect a pawn, you’ll lose your king, is that what you’re saying? But why not murder both the pawn and the king? Isn't that the best solution to your whack ass trolley problem.”  
  
“Whether it’s the rook or the bishop, the gold general or the silver general, they’re all possible sacrifices in the end.” Izuko’s eyes brightened. “Really, I’m envious of you. You controlled your sister far too well, but I had to throw away Kagenui because I can’t control her. You might be better at this the me.”  
  
“Wait, are we playing shougi or chess, or are we just straight up calvin balling this?”  
Junko felt left behind for once.  
  
“Hey, hey, shut up and listen for once. Big sister is telling you something valuable. The only piece that can’t be sacrificed is the king. If you think about it, it’s a strange game. Even if all the pieces except for the king are taken, so long as the king survives you can still win.”  
  
“Yeah, so what are we playing again? Ugh, I guess I'll just figure out the rules and play it better than you. It's so tiresome being better than everyone at everything. So much angst. Where are my uwus?”  
  
Suddenly, Izuko slammed her hand on the table. She looked at Junko directly in the eye. She changed the subject on a whim ignoring the girl's question. “But, anyway, JunJun, do you believe yourself to be the king?”

At this, Enoshima finally caught onto her metaphor. All she could do was laugh. “Me, a main character? I’m the villain, obviously. How many times do I need to laugh evilly and try to destroy the world for you idiots to get that.”  
  
“Right, it’s surprising someone as self obsessed with you hasn’t noticed. Right now, in this story, there’s no king, there’s no main character. Right now, the throne is vacant, and that’s why so many problems are occuring.”

Why would the bad guys win?  
Because the good guys don’t rise up to stop them.  
Izuko was an adult, but she had deduced all of this using her simple childish logic.  
  
“There’s no fun in playing games in there’s no winner or loser, is there?” Junko said, idly letting her hand rest in her chin.  
  
“THat’s right. It’s a situation with no winner or loser. People would call it a lawless zone. What I want to do is fill up that vacancy, if by appearance only. I entrusted Kaiki-kun to do that and he failed. Oshino’s wherabouts are unknown. Kagenui’s no good because I can’t control her. THe situation’s at a dead end. I had no choice but to act personally, and set foot on stage.”  
  
“Oh, oh, what kind of act are you going to put on. I can’t wait to see it.”  
  
“That’s the problem. You actually know what’s going on don’t you, but you’ve been holding yourself back, waiting and watching and trying to get your enertainment that way. That’s why, even though you know the identity of the person who stabbed you all that time ago you haven’t said a word about it because you want to see the chaos. I’m the opposite of you though, chaos irks me. In the situation where the daage keeps increasing, I’d like to put a lid on it, JunJun. So instead of saying I’m going to act, I could say I’d like to put an end to your actions specifically, JunJun’s actions.”

“Me? But you just said I’m not doing anything. Doing things requires like, effort, and I might ruin my manicure, it's like someone else deal with this.”  
  
“Yes, but you’re able to act. And the problem is, if you realize your importance and act the other side will act as well. Protagonist and antagonists are two sides of the same coin after all.”  
  
“You mean that poser Junko? Then, do you know who she is? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get in her way than to get in mine!? Actually when you go see her, can you tell her that outfit is so last season. I mean I'm wearing the same thing right now but I do it better naturally.”  
  
“You don’t have to think about what the other side is. The short answer is that it’s someone. The other side has been waiting for you to act, they’re a big fan of yours and they want to see what you’ll do in their play they’ve put on for you. It’s a duel like situation, and the first to act becomes the loser. River Bear should be familiar with that.”  
  
“Wait, what does Misogi know?”  
  
As she turned her head she saw Kumagawa already smiling like he understood. She realized in that moment, she had not understood him at all.  
  
“I can see a solution for this problem, but carrying out it is a little painful.” That adult said without a trace of regret on her face. She had already justified this action to herself. “I need to dispel the darkness gathered at your feet, how do you get rid of a shadow cast from an especially tall tree? How do you win at an impossible game of shougi.”  
  
At that, Izuko grabbed the board and flipped it in front of Junko. The pieces flew in every direction. Oh, she had never intended on playing games from the start. She could understand the logic though, it was her own childish logic. Set up the game, and then flip the board not letting anybody else play. Junko pouted. "If you were just going to flip the board from the start you should have let me do it, I love flipping things and making a mess."   
  
Suddenly Izuko snapped her fingers and the man in the half mask, Iihiko Shishime apeared behind her.  
“Hey, I know everything so I know this too. You’re not merely a puppet are you, Iihiko? In fact, you’re not loyal to Enoshima Junko at all. The person you love, your princess, is the girl behind the mask. But that girl’s forgotten who she really was.”

Iihiko’s lips tightened into a scowl.  
  
“And in doing so, she’s forgotten you as well. Your one tie to your previous identity. Even though you became this thing, this empty thing for her sake. That’s why, you’re not being controlled by her at all. You’ve been willingly obeying her all this time. Your hope is, if she completes this plan of hers, she’ll stop pretending to be Junko and go back to herself again.”

Matsuda stood up, only to be immediately swatted out of the way. Kumagawa quickly caught him.  
  
Izuko continued speaking uninterrupted. “What you want is for her to stop being a copy of someone. For her to be unique. Her own self. You loved her back then didn’t you? All you need is to destroy the real Junko, then she can go back to being her self. Not Junko, nor anybody else. She won’t lose sight of herself anymore. She won’t lose sight of you.”

Izuko closed her eyes and looked away.  
“It can’t be helped. If only Kaiki-kun had lived a little bit longer I might not have had to resort to this." She said, as she ordered Iihiko to kill the child in front of her.  
  
Iihiko moved forward and he cut her across the throat in an instant.  
Kumagawa had told her what dying was like before. It was feeling nothing, over your whole body.  
It spread out and every feeling and sensation was slowly replaced by nothing.   
You did not realize how much you felt until it all went away.   
Her fingers, her wrists, her elbows, her arms, her shoulders, her ankles, her legs, her knees,  her thighs, her waist, her chest, her collarbone, her neck, her chin, her eyes, her brain.  
Her head.  
She felt nothing.  
It was like he had cut them all away from her.  
  
Not even able to laugh or get the last word in, Enoshima Junko died on the ground right there without any drama at all. 

Kumagawa MIsogi only smiled.  
He picked her lifeless body up bridal style, and then handed it off to Matsuda. There was a strangle gentleness in how he handled the princess's corpse, caressing it, despite his total failure as a knight.   
  
“How the hell can you be so-”  
  
Kumagawa put his finger on Matsuda’s lips.  
『There’s no way she would die, because Junko’s the main character isn’t she? Your dad is a weird doctor who was trying to revive the dead, bring the princess to him and she’ll wake up. Don’t worry you’ll protect her this time Yasuke-chan.』  
  
Kumagawa stepped in between Iihiko and him. He looked completely calm. The boy who was always fighting against himself and the world, the off balanced boy, was at ease.  
  
Iihiko stood up and tried to chase after them, but in an instant Kumagawa appeared in his path and the two of them clashed. Izuko Gaen laid back and stared at her cell phone again.  
  
“I’ll admit, I know everything but I don’t exactly know what’s going through your head right now.”

『Huh? I thought my plan was easy to understand. After all I threw myself against Humanity’s strongest, and died over and over again but none of those deaths stuck. The reason I came here, to face Iihiko-chan should be obvious. I even distracted Medaka-chan so she wouldn't stop me.』  
  
Iihiko drew his short blades, and Kumagawa drew his screws.

『The reason I kept saying I love you, isn’t that what most normal people do? They say goodbye to their loved ones, right before they die. I don’t think I’m that hard to understand, you’re all being weird.』  
  
Their two blades clashed against each other, metal screaming against metal as Yasuke ran away.  
  
『Yasuke-chan was right! Being around Mukuro-chan and him all I do is cause them pain. It’s not fair that Junko is nicer for me. So that’s why I thought, I should just disappear. I don’t belong in this world, the only person I ever belonged with was Ajimu-san.』  
  
“Ajimu Najimi is dead you know.” Izuko said lounging idly.

『Yeah, she must be so lonely. That’s why I decided. That moment that I told Junko I was going to smash the world and leave nothing left but ashes, that’s why I decided to destroy my world.』

Kumagawa’s screw shattered, and so did the short blades Iihiko was wielding and both were thrown back.

『I don’t know what the afterlife is like but I think Ashinshin-san is lonely there. If she's lonely inside her coffin I'll lay down next to her. If I kill the main character Junko, the story will just end, that’s what you were thinking right? Well I think the same thing. I’m glad our plans aligned. Junko will probably come back in a few minutes, but in this window I won’t be breaking our promise.』  
  
That was not to say he did not love her, or he was not upset at her death.   
He loved every part of her.   
That meant, he had a pure and genuine love.   
For the tragedy that Junko consumed as well.   
He could justify himself easily thinking.  
If I were to disappear while the princess was sleeping, this will make her despair.   
Kumagawa MIsogi smiled.  
A petty smile. He was trying to sneak away like the crook he was.  
"I’ll just listen to what everybody said until now, I’ll just go die."  
He had been listening all that time. Those words were impossible to get rid off, they remained inside of him.  
The boy made eye contact with Iihiko even though the other was wearing a mask.   
His rotten fish eyes had rotted out completely.   
There was nothing left in those eyes except rings of grey.   
  
“Unhumorous.”  
Iihiko’s voice said, his voice was completely dry, his throat cracked and he did not feel like laughing either. 

 


	34. The Girl Outside the Coffin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The death scene was written to try to capture the style of Zaregoto's stream of consciousness narration whenever the main character gets hurt.  
> Ajimu's death is a reference to Furuta Nimura.   
> Junko's hallucinations are a reference to kingdom hearts. I had kingdom hearts on my brain while writing it I'm going to write some KH Fic soon.

The lantern spun in front of her eyes. There is no value to pain to those who do not fear death. With just one decision, life forms can become this strong. Or perhaps, just by throwing away one decision life forms can become this weak. Either way, she felt that it was splendid. It did not hurt nor itch to die - well, really it left a bit of an itchy feelings - which she was grateful about, but it was problematic that she no longer had a body. It felt like her feet were not touching the ground. She felt extremely unstable. As if she were floating in a zero gravity field. SPeaking of which a long time ago - before she participated in the hope’s peak academy system - when she was thirteen, with Matsuda Yasuke she talked about that. Whether by the time we became adults people would be able to travel to space with ease. She told Yasuke she wanted to go to space and become a neet in space if earth became too boring. They might be able to. Do you want to go with me? Not really. Not interested. She wanted him to say yes because it would be lonely without Yasuke-kun there. Lonely, lonely, lonely, just like the time he shut himself up in his house and away from her and spent time with that corpse of his mother. She spent so long building that sand castle because she wanted him to come play and he never came to see it. A lot of the adults came to pay attention to her at first but then they got bored and left her there working on that sand castle all along. She wanted to go. She wanted to go despite being a hikikomori, she would become the first hikikomori in space. A pretty distasteful being. What’s distasteful? A pathetic life form. **_I’m not pathetic._**  
  
But space is pathetic. There is nothing worth anything in this world, anyways. There is nothing worth anything anywhere. **_Where am I? Nowhere?_** Nowhere. You can’t escape it even if you go to space, if you look at Earth, you just think “It’s blue.” That’s all you think by going to space, you know? If you want to see that just google it up shitlord. Not just blue, but red, black, green, everything is there. Going to space is just a roundabout way of confirming how insignificant you are. **_If I could escape this boring life, I wouldn’t mind dying. For a while I truly thought that._** If she wanted to see blue, it would be better to just look into Misogi’s eyes then. Eheheheh. Stp laughing for no reason like that. Disturbing, MIsogi I hate that about you. I love that you say stuff like that though. Oh, shut up.  
  
“Stop trying to flirt…”

The death of a truly pitiful brat. So prideful, so prideful, so prideful. Pride comes right before the fall. The world had flipped and she was falling. Such an excited, excited, excited, and playful girl. You’re always acting bright and cheery, befitting your title as Ultimate Fashionista. However, at times it seems as though you are bored with everything in the world. And misconstruing that as ego. Seeing just the surface of everything, or perhaps only able to see the hidden shadows of the world. In any case, only ever seeing things as pure white or pitch black, white hope, or black despair, one side of monokuma or the other. Despite having a brain smarter than anybody else not caring about nuance at all and only caring about things in extremes. In any case, just looking at one side of things. Feelings wiser than anybody else, despite having only seen a little bit of the world. Afraid beyond afraid of having a hollow self crumbled to bits. And what remained after rumbling was nothing. The hollow self had become herself. A tragedy, a fare, that did not elicit laughs or tears. **_I was living without feeling alive. As for why I didn’t just die._ **

The lantern kept spinning in front of her eyes. Even though it was all over in a moment, she died in just a moment without getting a death scene or even dramatic last words, her brain processed so fast that she could think of a thousand things in one single second. But she had led a very limited life, she had not even met a thousand people whose faces were worth remembering. Kurokami Medaka. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi. Ajimu Najimi. Kumagawa MIsogi. Komaeda Nagito. Kamukura Izuru. Matsuda Yasuke. Matsuda-kun. Matsuda-kun. Matsuda-kun. Matsuda-kun. When she was in middle school she wore a pink button up jacket over her uniform. She was nt an outstanding beauty at all she looked like any other middle schooler. She had red hair just to her shoulders and tied it back with a single bear pony. Yasuke was much shorter too and wore a sweater vest everywhere, and those cute boyish shorts. Even though she was exhausted just living in those days she was much better at pretending to be normal. She walked to school with Yasuke every day, and when it looked like he was getting sluggish in his pace,she would wrap an arm under his and drag him forward. She had a super cute pink backpack back then. Oh, it was so fun to watch Yasuke study. Even though he had to work hard to become a neurologist, and she liked to distract hi the entire time he would always let her watch him study because she would be lonely otherwise. Ikusaba Mukuro. When they were in primary school her sister would paint her face and call it camouflage makeup. She stalked behind her and Yasuke running from bush to bush on their way to school. She said it was practicing recon for protecting her sister in the future. It was very possible her sister was just born a military otaku. Back then they did not look so different, a girl with red hair and a girl with dark black hair about the same height and Yasuke in between them. No, no, even further back than that. She was an infant and she reached out and wrapped her fingers around her older sister’s fingers. They really were always together. A few years later she walked home from school with her sister, holding onto two f her fingers in the exact same way, a distant way to hold hands.  
  
SHe was having a big flashback. FIrst her family. Big sister. Father. Mother. Memories of her childhood. She could not recall the face of a single friend. She did not know any. No one in this world knew her. Crumbling. Sand Castle. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Yasuke’s mother died the other day, so she became his new family. A face by her every day, a face that she remembered. Everybody else’s face was just so fake, shallow, only looking at the surface of things, at least put on a more convincing act. Wait, what was she seeing? Was this a revolving lantern? **_I was okay with dying, no more than okay. It was the only thing I was looking forward to. Yet, I still wanted to live contrary to expectations. I felt that it was lame to just die suddenly all alone._ ** An airport. A family vacation. Even a foreign country she knew nothing about was boring to her. She held her sister and cried begging her not to go. Even if all she ever did was bully her and taunt her she truly loved that sister. Mukuro left. She watched the truck that carried her sister away tears in her eyes. Her parents did not even bother to stay in the country to look for Mukuro. They were glad to be rid of her so now they could focus on their worthwhile daughter. They went home like nothing happened. Worthless adults. Shallow. Not even worth remembering their faces. If you’re going to put on an act like that, if you’re going to spend your entire life acting than make me laugh at least, why are you all so boring? If you’re going to be terrible be terrible in unpredictable ways, not selfish and self serving ways like every other shallow and petty pereson. Goodbye Mukuro. My big Sister.

The classmates all got along with her. Middle School. One year of high school. The high school of hope how pretentious. She decided to destroy it. She did not know the meaning of the word hope, she had never even felt it once. She was going to destroy what other people had that she could not have. One time when she was playing with Yasuke, a bunch of other kids tried to take her ball from her. Yasuke said he would protect her, but they were bigger and older kids. She just bit into the ball and then crushed it. Nobody could have it now. She got to hope’s peak, and a lot happened. Now that she thought about it, so much happened her head would explode. She had to go to school seriously every day. It was the first time she even bothered to attend class and participate. She got to see Mukuro again and go to this school with her. Double trouble they wanted them both. She was so happy.  "Alright, now that the tension is off the charts, let's go head to class! Our beloved classmates are waiting for us!""O-Ok..." Just like that, Enoshima momentarily returned to her school life. It was annoying getting friendly with others, but soon the spice of unbelievable despair will scatter about. Actually, I'm getting pretty excited.

"Alright! Let's enjoy the rest of our school life to its fullest!" Her childhood friend went to this school as well. The same Yasuke as before. The same herself as before.  
  
Then, that fool. That fool, that fool, that fool, that fool. He showed up out of nowhere and ruined everything. She was happy, living happily, not thinking at all about the consequences, she stepped over whoever she liked and destroyed whoever she liked. Then one day hagakure the fortune teller drew a card and told her a joker was going to come find her. An unexpected element in her fortune. She laughed him off because unlike her Hagakure’s predictions were never accurate. The fool showed up suddenly out of the blue, his eyes were blue and he stopped her, even then she was happy because having all her plans thrown off at last minute and being killed was all she desired. However, that fool did not kill her. Cruelly, curelly, he forced her to live. She had been miserable since then. Meeting him. Making contact with the human failure. Pointless conversations. Conversations withou self-love. Tlaking with him again, and again, and again, until there were so many words she wanted to drown in them. He said live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live a normal life, you’re a normal girl, and that was too much so she threw herself off a balcony and drowned. **_I wanted to live until I could die with style at least._ ** She washed up on the shore of Jabberwock’s island. She met the same boy, she fell in love with him. She forgot. The water washed her memories away. She met him again. She fell in love with him again. She forgot. Then he was the one who forgot her, and that was unforgivable. She dragged him out of that world. She told him that if she was going to live, that he would live as well. Instead of clinging to happiness in a fake world, she forced him to witness the despair of the outside world again. Living together. **_But in the end I just died. Just like that. So whatever. The new Junko can take my place on the stage. I’ll retire from the role. Like a legendary actor who defined the role. She can take up my mantle. I don’t care anymore. I’m like so over it._ ** **  
** **  
** She snapped back to reality. What the hell, she mumbled, she mumbled. A lot happened in her life. Jeez, her life was not so empty after all. Really, Jeez. **_LIfe’s ending is so usatisfying. It’s not like in stories. I was right. Nobody likes stories that end without hitting any of the themes. I was right about life. Gosh, it really is so painful being so right all the time. And so much smarter than everyone. Smarter than the whole world. And better than everyone. It hurts so much I could die._ **

The world was reversed, the sky and the ocean seemed to have swapped places, but that was not correct. The one who was reversed was herself. Finally, both of her eyes opened. Two of them. She had two eyes again. **_I just wanted to live a life that was different from everybody else. Oh but that’s exactly what I got wasn’t it? Everybody else was alive, everybody else was born in this world to live except for me._ **She opened her mouth and mumble, mumble, mumble, she could only mumble why was that. She opened it further and she saw that the words that were escaping her lips took the form of bubbles. She was in the ocean that was why. That was why she saw so much blue, that was why the world was reversed and she was suspended. She flipped herself around and started to swim up, up, up, up, up, following the bubbles she had made.  
  
When she finally broke the surface she took in a deep breath of air. Funny. Because she was dead, and yet the first thing she thought to do was breathe. It was just instinct. Apparently her body knew how to be alive, it was just her brain that did not. As soon as she broke the surface of the water, she heard voices from somewhere. Relieved. She thought her eardrums may have burst from the pressure of the ocean that was crushing her, but it was a needless worry.  
  
“-----Whooo------ Junko------”  
  
The voice - who? Who was Junko indeed. It was a terrible monotone, as unemotional as if a synthetic voice were speaking. Standing on the surface of the water, giving no reflection at all as her pale feet touched it, ephemeral, like a ghost, as if she wasn’t even there.  
  
Ajimu Najimi stood in front of her.  
  
“Yahoo, Junko-chan.”

Junko treaded the water, her hair was a mess falling over her face and slicked down, and her makeup was running from swimming.  
  
“I’m glad I died ahead ahead of you, this way I could complete my plan of meeting you in this place, and then giving you one more chance and convincing you to come back-”  
  
“Don’t care.” Junko said immediately. While she was in the water, her thoughts were just like that, spinning, swirling, waves moved in the water because of the diffusion of air molecules rubbing against the water molecules, and her thoughts were like that too, just spiraling, spiraling, spiraling, spun by something else. But. She was done now. Even absolute chaos like that aligned itself in front of her in a perfect and orderly fashion in a few minutes. She understood more or less.

“Aren’t I supposed to wake up in a classroom?”  
  
“That’s only if I stop you from dying. This time you died for real. You’ve fallen into a limbo like dimension and your choice is to go back and try again or-”  
  
“I just said I don’t care. Okay, I think I understand now. See you.”  
  
Junko started to swim towards the shore. Ajimu’s image disappeared floating atop the water, and instead she appeared as a reflection in the water, appearing next to Junko every few strokes.  
  
“Juuuuuunkooooo-chaaaaaan.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I prepared a big speech and everything.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You’re supposed to have a revelation about the meaning of life and go back again.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Don’t you understand what kind of scene this is?”

“You’ve literally been stalking me this whole time. Don’t you get it by now? I’m a bad person. I’m like barely even a person. I’m not going to play along with whatever plan you had to motivate or inspire me because I don’t care.”  
  
That was it.  
That was what she had learned.  
  
“If I cared enough, I would change, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anyone else, and apparently for all that self love I was drowning in I didn’t care about myself either. In the end I’m just lazy so get off my back Ajimu-san, I’m tired.”

As she finished treading water, she made it to shore. The moment she took a step forward on the sand, still dripping wet, Ajimu extended from her shadow. Ajimu’s silhouette carved itself out in black bast out in the sand in front of her, and like a paper doll two holes were cut out for her eyes and one for her mouth. That empty looking two dimensional face frowned at Junko. “Come on, I know you’re just being stubborn.”

“I’m not. Gosh, are you stupid? Like seriously, are you stupid? I’m not saying that in the tsundere sense, it was a legitimate question. Even after all this time you don’t understand humans at all do you, you brain dead non-human. You thought all this feel good second chance or life stuff would work on me? I never even liked you once to begin with.”  
  
“Junko, you were starting to change…” The curvature of Ajimu’s frown worsened. It was the frown of a disappointed parent.  
  
“No I wasn’t. You know what, the only reason I changed was because you two cheated, Kumagawa had a magic trick that erased the damage I had done, and you used a bunch of supernatural powers to mess with my head. That’s all. That’s the only reason. We only got close because we got fifty two damn resets in that killing game. In fact, despite having literal magic, and a literal reset button at your disposal you still couldn’t get me to change. It’s impossible.  If things had gone how they were supposed to go, at the end of the world, I wouldn’t have changed. There’s no room left to change.”  
  
She sat between the shore and the water, thinking of how she had lived her life. Never choosing between one or the other, she simply wanted to sit at the edge of the shoreline like this and be rocked back and forth. That way everything would move around her without her having to move. If the world was constantly in motion, if she was not forced to decide then she might not get bored with her choice, if she could keep rocking back and forth she might be able to live without getting bored.

“LIsten, when you’re backed to the edge of that cliff, when you’re at the world’s end there’s nothing left to do but throw yourself off.”  
  
She walked forward, hoping she would detach herself from her annoying shadow. If she could live like peter pan without a shadow, detached from everything, flying, then maybe life would not be so bad. Wait that was exactly how she had lived.  
  
“Junko, wait I just want to help you. There were people you loved back in the real world, weren’t there?”  
  
“Yeah, and I murdered them. Several times over, actually.”  
  
“Junko, you’re like a younger sister to me.”  
  
“I murdered my sister, and I don’t even care enough about you to murder you.”  
  
“What are you going to do?”  
  
“Well, if this is really limbo then I’ll see what the afterlife is like. Get bored. Go to hell. Get cut up, reassembled, tortured for eternity. Get bored of that. Become queen of hell. Whatever. Don’t care anymore.”

Born in a coffin. Living there my entire life. And dying. Perhaps if she pushed those feelings away if she did not care it would hurt less. She was continually disappointed in her sister but she was the one who had lived a disappointing life in the end. Because even her sister had been able to change and she was not.  
  
As she kept on walking, eventually she dried enough from the ocean that her leather boots became more comfortable to walk in. She left the beach and saw a broken city in front of her. Buildings were tilted on an axis, or half crumbling. Street lamps were knocked over. The ground was torn up raw, there were no roads at all.  
  
A large tower at the edge of the horizon scraped the sky. Next to it was a giant robotic bear with half of its face missing. Its fur had been torn off and its skeleton exposed. Its smile was smashed into pieces, teeth broken and shattered. Awe, poor Monokuma. The glass of every window was shattered and the broken pieces of glass had been blown away by the wind long ago.  
  
Chunks of the earth were torn out and uprooted, like someone had taken a bite out of them and spit them back out. In the distance she saw a bridge leading to an island, it was broken into three pieces and those pieces were jutting out of the water looking like sunken ships. In the distance, smoke trailed buildings. A monokuma mask was washed up at the edge of the beach and covered in seaweed.  
  
It basically looked like the aftermath of a godzilla attack. In other words this city, no, probably this whole world had been ended. Junko kept walking until she saw the ruins of a school. It took her a moment to recognize it. There were several chalk outlines drawn on the ground, and old withered flowers from a memorial. The central tower had completely collapsed, and there was a much older building in the back of it in tact, but the front of the building was lined with machine gun shell casings. There was a door like a great safe door that had been left open.  
  
Oh, this was the ruins of Hope’s Peak. Seeing the school she hated completely destroyed, and the reserve course’s coprses that had rained on the ground and left their chalk outlines, killing 3,500 lives at once, she could not even feel a little bit of enjoyment. Enoshima Junko yawned and turned around.  
  
Then suddenly a hand shot out from her shadow and grabbed her by the ankle. Ajimu Najimi’s nails tightened around her, and raked into her skin. “Have you realized what this world is yet?” 

Before her wedding, Eurydice danced in a field of flowers. Hiding amongst the flowers there was a snake. A snake bit her, and she was whisked away to the underworld. She was so happy too, it was her wedding day after all. Ajimu Najimi that entire woman was poison, she felt poison enter her veins, hiding underneath Ajimu’s finger nails as she was scratched. A snake bit her. She died right there amongst the flowers. Sinking, sinking, Enoshima Junko sunk into a deep sleep.Somehow. Even though she was supposed to be dead. Apparently, she could sink further.  
  
As she dreamed she sat there and watched. The school was no longer broken apart in front of her. It was the Hope’s Peak she remembered, the Hope’s Peak Kumagawa desperately wanted to get back to. The school was perfectly intact, but it was entirely empty. Then, Junko and Mukuro walked around the campus. First during the day the two of them were just pretending to be normal classmates. Then, another Junko and Mukuro walked forward this Mukuro was wearing her flack jacket. That was the Junko that was going to find Kamukura. The Junko that snuck around destroying the school.

The Junko that participated in the sports festival walked around the campus as well. She was wearing a tight white shirt and bloomers. Another Junko walked around the campus with Kumagawa wearing a student council armband around her arm. Ryoko walked around the campus being chased after by Matsuda. Junko, Kumagawa, Makoto and Mukuro walked around the campus during the school festival trying to enjoy the booths together.  
  
She saw Junko, after Junko, after Junko walking around the school campus. Soon everybody else faded out and nothing but Junko remained. Walking forward, walking backwards, walking to the right, walking to the left, walking up buildings, walking down them, walking in circles, walking with purpose, walking without purpose. It was a school filled with nothing but Junko.  
  
She remembered this too. Junkoland. It was Junkai’s plan, and her second plan to take over the world. Fill the world with nothing but copies of her, to Junko as she pleases, to despair as she pleases, literally upload copies of herself into other people’s brains so that everybody in the world would think exactly like her.  
  
God, was she desperate or what?  
  
Seeing the academy packed with Junkos was too much for her. There was too much of her. It was going to start raining Junkos, going to start flooding Junkos, she was going to drown in her own identity. Suddenly Kumagawa walked around with his hands crossed behind his head, and an arm band around his uniform, the same Kumagawa from his fake student council president days. She reached forward and tried to grab his shoulder only to see that she did not have a hand.  
  
She had a first person perspective of the world but no hand. She looked down and saw that she had no body as well. She was just a pair of eyes watching. She had no self, no ego. It made no sense. She was everywhere. There was so much her surrunding her, she had painted herself over the whole world. Yet, she was everywhere and nowhere. She saw herself everywhere but had no idea what she looked like.  
  
A paradox. Illogical thinking. A stupid, illogical girl, self obsessed, self loathing, making everything about herself and yet knowing nothing at all about herself.  
  
“That time you pretended to be in the student council. That time you fought Medaka. That time you fought against me. That time you went to Jabberwock. In the real world. In the data world. In the past. In the present. Relived again and again… like dejavu. You keep coming back to this school, even though you hate it.”

Ajimu Najimi said, but really she was just rubbing it in. Throwing salt in the wound. To the girl who was born incomplete, with half her organs missing, with her head broken open and her brain exposed. Junko already knew what she was going to say next.  
  
“This is the world you wanted isn’t it? You destroyed the world so it would be more fun for you, but you weren’t satisfied with that. You filled the world with yourself but you still were lonely.”  
  
Somewhere she was laughing.  
Junko looked at her own shadow, and the cut out part that was Ajimu’s mouth suddenly grew teeth, so she could flash a smile at her before laughing hard enough to clatter those teeth.  
Not only Ajimu, all the other Junko’s did as well.  
They laughed hard enough that they ate up all the oxygen in the air with their laughter.

Junko gripped her head staggering forward, not even able to breathe.  
  
“You think I don’t know…?”

She said as she fell towards the ground. She twisted her body, jerking her neck around and back to see where Ajimu was standing over her, haunting her like some ghost.  
  
“You really think I wanted to be like this? You think I wanted to be born so I could spend my whole life like some pretty doll on a shelf?”  
  
If that was the case.  
If that was all her life amounted to.  
She would fall off the shelf and break her head open. She would look as one of her eyeballs fell away from her cracked open head and rolled across the floor. Not only herself, she would break every single toy. Every single toy in the chest. She would smash them all into pieces and nobody else would get to play either, just like her, and then she would finally be free.  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
Ajimu’s voice whispered into her ear.  
  
“You always do this. You just… hit me with supernatural bullshit when I don’t go your way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Were you like this with Kumagawa, too?”  
  
“...”  
  
“I see. I beat my sister until she was crying and begging, and I said I was doing it to feel something but in the end I felt nothing, so I guess she endured that pain for no reason. Not like I can bitch. I mean I’m going to bitch anyway especially when it’s hypocritical, but at least I’m self aware.”  
  
After that, Enoshima Junko lost consciousness. She somehow dreamt, while dead. And she woke up while dead again. Waking up, she remembered the fact that she was dead and groaned.  
  
She was born in a coffin. She lived in a coffin. She died in a coffin. Never once did she manage to push the lid up, even a crack and see the world outside of it. Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment?

  
She thought her punishment times were much cooler at least, they involved flames, and fireworks, and execution machines it was all very flashy. Life did not end like in storybooks, it was unsatisfying, and there were no themes to capitulate on at all, and she had so so so many complaints to file with the author.

 

😈

 

The next day she woke up curled in a pile of rubble like a stray cat. She walked as far away from that school as possible and back into the city. The city was as wrecked as it was yesterday. The air itself smelt burnt. She wondered if it had rained ashes, from how heavy the atmosphere was and how hard it was to breathe.

She walked the streets of the city to more closely inspect it. Posters lined the walls with her face on it marking her as the utlimate despair. Half of them were covered with grafitti glorifying her, all like yassss queeen despair queeen slay, and the other half was vandalized by survivors who had not given into despair and had their sanity remaining. Junko realized she would be easily recognizable from the posters, and pulled out both of her hair bands letting her hair down, she snapped the two bear bands around her wrist instead. Perfect disguise, nobody would suspect a thing.  
  
The broken up buildings were also covered with missing posters for various children, family members, some of them looked more than a year old. She imagined overnight, so many people went missing, some ran away, some were taken, and then everybody had to go on with half of the world snatched up in the madness and confusion, and while everybody was trying to live people would keep being snatched up, until there was less, and less, and less and still they would keep going.

There were posters advertising a concert being held by the ultimate despairs. She saw a few people gossiping about it maddeningly, apparently there were despair fanboys and despair idols now.  
  
She saw mindless worshippers wearing bear masks on the outside of the city. The city was already so broken but they wandered it looking for something else to break. They were like drug addicts, not thinking about the rest of the world at all, just where they could get their next shot of despair. To feel despair again because they had fallen so far that was all they thought they could feel. They had become broken like she was, dependant like she was, but she felt nothing at all about this.  
  
The most intriguing thing about the city was not the destruction, or the signs of despair but rather the traces of normal life still present inside of it. Hope’s Peak was destroyed but there were still normal schools in the district. She watched as through the ruins of the city girls would go to school in packs still wearing their uniform. A newspaper was still being published, even weekly shonen jump was present in the raks. They all averted their eyes from the ruined buildin. A few girls talked in hushed whispers about a friend of theirs they had not seen in a week. Despite the obvious danger of the world around them, they kept making up silly lies like she had run off with a boy instead of acknowledging that she was probably dead and taken like the many faces that appeared in posters on the wall.  
  
Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. Junko had spent her entire life trying to smash the status queue to force people to be more interesting. Now as she watched people adapt to this ruined world around them she realized, that even if the status queue was completely destroyed, that it would just reset, people would get used to this, and this would become the new status queue. Which meant everything she had done into her life was pointless up until now. However, that discovery did not make her feel despair, she felt nothing at all about it.  
  
She went to a convenience store hoping to raid it, but then it turned out even with all the windows smashed, and the buildings destroyed around it there was still a clerk working the desk. She had to flirt with him just to get some food for free. All the fruit they had was rotten, but she stole a rotting apple instead. Enoshima Junko sat on a piece of foundation, in between a two split apart buildings tilted off center behind her. She ate the string cheese she had been given for free from the store clerk. Working minimum wage at the end of the world , she could not even bring herself to feel despair about that. 

A cat came to bug her. A small little kitten. It rubbed its nose aganst her boots.  
  
“Your mom? You lost her? Yeah sorry I don’t care about your tragic backstory, kitty..” 

She finished eating it right in front of the kitten and then hissed so it would go away. A chill ran through the skinny kitten’s spine and it was terrified of her, running off. If that cat was born without a mother it was doomed to die soon anyway, and not like a lot of people living in the wreckage of this city were going to adopt a stray cat, not when they were too focused on surviving themselves.  
  
She looked at the rotted out apple in front of her.  
It just occurred to her now, she was never going to see Kumagawa again.  
  
“I should have… I should have shared the fruit with him earlier. Then maybe we could have gotten kicked out of paradise together at least.”  
  
She said, opening her mouth wanting to bite even into an old and rotten apple, truly tempted for a moment, before she stopped at the last moment and threw her away.  
  
Junko’s shadow projected on one of the buidlings behind her started speaking on its own again. “Gooooo baaaaaaaack.”  
  
“Noooooooo.” She deadpanned at the shadow. “I’m not going to no matter how spooky you say it, you damn ghost girl.”

Ajimu snapped her fingers. Junko turned her head and saw, one of the buildings behind her was a busted up electronics store. There were tvs staked in the window, every single one of their screens had been broken. Yet suddenly even on cracked glass with missing pieces, an image flickered to life. Junko saw Kumagawa battling for his life, against Iihiko.  
  
“Go back for him then. Even if life was meaningless, you found love didn’t you? Someone was able to love someone as empty as you.”  
  
Junko stuck her tongue out at that. “Gross. Reducing another person to that and then pinning your will to live on that like. Ew.”  
  
Junko loved Kumagawa because he could not be controlled. He was not tethered to anything. If she tethered herself to him, and imposed herself on him just to give her some meaning in life, just because she wanted to have attachment now that she was set adrift he would stop being the Kumagawa she loved.  
  
Not only that, but in his requiem she could hear him singing out Ajimu’s name again and again. She grinded her teeth in annoyance. “See, I told you. In the end, Kumagawa is just like everyone else. He’s just trying to make up for the love his parents didn’t give him by attaching himself to you, his substitute for them. No better than Matsuda-kun, do I have a type or something? It’s always going to be about you in the end, Ajimu-san.”  
  
“If you go back though, you can save him now. I can’t live but you can, you’ll be different than me.”  
  
“But in the end the only way he’ll see it is that I’m replacing you. I’m giving him the love you didn’t give him, see like that, ick. Pass.” She bit her own tongue until she could taste her blood to express her disgust.  
  
Everyone is alone. You can always find a spare for any talent. Any relationship can be replaced.  
No matter what happens everyone will just get used to it. They’ll return to status queue.  
She had gotten bored of a world like that.

Nothing special about that world. There was nobody special in it. Worst of all there was nothing to write stories about. Uninspired. That was the faintest of praise she could damn the world with.

She stopped herself from spitting back up her own dinner. But then she got curious as asked her shadow a question. That shadow projected on the side of her own building, that shadow that she could not control and kept annoying her. That shadow she just wanted to look away from.  
  
“This isn’t actually limbo is it?”

“Well I was hoping you wouldn’t stay around that long to find out, but no I sort of cheated. This is the world that never was.”  
  
“You stole that from kingdom hearts.”  
  
“Hey I’ve existed since the beginning of time and predated kingdom hearts and therefore I’m not stealing.” Ajimu Najimi did a poor job of justifying herself. “This is the world that Kumagawa erased, the two years that happened after that tragedy. It continued to exist, in here.”  
  
“So, if I had never met Kumagawa this was what would have happened to the world. I assume by now, I hosted the death game and killed myself. But… I died anyway in the timeline I met Kumagawa so. Ugh, are we doing a multiple universe things, it’s all so hecking pointless.”  
  
“No, just one universe, and one if scenario. No more universes than that, multiverse theory is like time travel too complicated. The author doesn’t want to bother.”  
  
“You’re still talking in that annoying way.” Junko thought that was her annoying way to talk, it was only fun when she did it. Now everybody was doing the meta talk thing, it became less special. Just like how everybody was into despair, it was the latest fad in this world and she was feeling less and less despair by the moment.  
  
She liked despair before it was cool. Then again she was responsible for this trend so she only had herself to blame.

“I cheated.” Ajimu admitted. “I died ahead of time and then cheated death by coming here, so I could wait for you here and give you my return trip back.”  
  
“Not going back. God, you can’t even die properly? How lame are you?”  
  
“Awe, but it’s scary.”

Neither of them had any idea what afterlife was waiting for them next. Junko saw a bottle littered on the street. She walked to it and picked it up smashing it against the side of a building. All she wanted to do was smash her second chance. If she died for real this time, maybe the afterlife would lead her somewhere she did not expect.  
  
But then again, hell would probably just be, more of this, more of the same. Hell was just her every day life, living without changing, stuck inside her own head unable to escape passively watching everything move her by. As long as she had awareness she would still exist like this. Even if she went to hell and was cut into pieces she would eventually get used to that. Even if she was forced to wear last season’s clothing as eternal torture she would get used to that too.  
  
In Demons by Dostoyevsky, a man kills himself to prove his own freedom. To show his own subordination, his new fearsome freedom. Then, why did Junko want to kill herself? To be free from her own head? Because she thought she might finally escape her own boredom, her sense of inevitability, her creeping sensation that she was not born a person who was meant to enjoy life. The fact she was born differently from everybody else. Down to the way she perceived life, too different. Too smart for the world to the point it was slowly driving her insane as the rest of the world could not catch up with her.

Everyone is happy because everyone is afraid to proclaim self-will… but I will proclaim, terribly unhappy because I am terribly afraid.  
  
The only thing she thought could free herself now was the total cessation of existence. If she could just feel nothing at all, see nothing at all, that would be better. Entropy was all that was awaiting for her, so why not speed ahead and make entropy her bitch by now. If she was not thinking, then she would not have to think how bored she was.  
  
Maybe, the reason she wanted to kill herself was to prove that she was not alive. That she had never been alive. She had been born, but she did not live, not even once. She did not breathe. Her blood did not circulate. Her heart did not bleed. She was so cold, unmoving and unfeeling.  
  
She wanted to kill herself to prove she was not alive, because then she would be dead. Flawless logic. But she wanted to prove no one else was living too. To prove to them that the way everyone else told her to live, the way that was impossible for her, the values it was impossible for her to value.  
  
The normal life that everybody lived did not exist. That if she could not have it, they could not have it too. That it was never there in the first place.  
  
As she made her way through the town she saw atrocity upon atrocity with regularity. There were people getting beaten in back alleys. There were children whose parents had disappeared over night stealing for the first time. People put on those bear masks, not because they believed in despair but just to give themselves a release they could get away with. But what annoyed her the most was all the normal people going about their days.  
  
They were not living because they had faced tragedy head on and overcome it. They were just averting their eyes from tragedy. The end of the world, even the end of the world could be ignored by human beings.  
  
Then suddenly when she was walking she noticed a pack of the bear heads ahead of her. Even though they worshipped her like a goddess, they were annoying, like fan boys so she decided to change her path to avoid them. Even in this disaster spawned city, with no money at all, and only the clothes on her back she had remained perfectly safe this far using her brain to predict danger because of course she did.  
  
She wondered what the other Junko felt. Ajimu had told her several times that her death felt completely empty, that she just stared at her impending execution and thought _even despair is… starting to get boring._ However, in giving in to her baser instincts for despair she got to destroy the academy, destroy the world, turn the classmates she loved against each other and watch them kill one another. She must have felt something after all of that. Even trying to find another way like she had in her lifetime, she had died and empty and boring death  so what was the difference? She might as well have just given in.  
  
“I got bored of getting bored… Jeez… Even when I’m dead I still get bored… This sucks…”  
  
Just as she was about to turn the corner she saw out of the corner of her eye new movement. A figure had appeared in the middle of the bears, and started a fight with them. He was different from the crowds that just avoided them.  
  
Violent, brutal, he cut straight through them. Even though he was surrounded and taking hits, for as much damage as he took, he dealt that much out. His fighting style looked like he was thrashing about on strings. Either he was a puppet trying to break his strings, or the person controlling him was button mashing to hell and back, either metaphor worked for describing his wild appearance.  
  
He ripped. He tore. He bit into them. One of them raised a bat with nails sticking out of it and slammed it into his head hard, and after taking the blow he stumbled back for a few moments before throwing himself into the fight once more. Standing above their corpses he was the last thing that was whole, he had barely left pieces of them behind.  
  
“Jeez that really hurts. Unfortunately, once you know how pain feels it’s no big deal anymore.” That man was wearing a black hoodie, and unzipped with a hood pulled over his face. Undreaneath it, he wore a pitch black shirt with white decals, it looked like two wings of an angel spreading out over his chest, and the eyeball of a seraphic watching in the middle of those spreading wings. He wore black loose pants as well, and attached to his ankle was a single metal cuff with a broken chain trailing behind it.

Junko saw the torn apart leg he had thrown on the ground in front of him. Not only that, but the man looked up and under the shadow of his hood she could tell he had noticed her. He started to walk towards her.  
  
She ran off in another direction. Into a construction sight. Apparently they were trying to rebuild even in the end of the worlds, idiots. She had forgotten about the broken bottle and forgotten about slitting her own throat to get out of this place now. He followed her through the construction site. She had no idea why. Perhaps seeing his prey fleeing had activated the predatory instincts of a lone wolf. It was only natural for something that was hungry for blood and desperate to sink their teeth into something so the ever present pangs of hunger would go away would chase a rabbit on instinct alone. She could sympathize, the adrenaline of the chase would replace the empty feeling of ever gnawing hunger for a little bit.  
  
Just like the time she fought against the Madarai brothers. Junko used her predictive powers to see every single weak spot in the construction site, every place it could fall apart. She picked up a stone from the ground and therw it at a weak point in one of the iron bars.  
  
Chaos theory always worked in her favor it seemed. As she was chased through the maze of the half constructed building, she heard the sound of bolts unscrewing from above unable to handle the weight of her plus the pursuer. Then at every single weak point it began to collapse. She climbed higher than the pursuer and watched the iron bars fall on him. They fell right in a row, one of them ever piercing straight through his shoulder.  
  
When she was finished the whole sight had collapsed behind her. She watched the dust settle and knew nobody could survive that. The Madarai brothers had not at least. She remembered at the time yelling at the corpse to give her more of a challenge next time, he was disappointing for dying so easily.

Just as she thought of that, three of the iron bars which had landed on top of one another in a criss crossing pile began to move. In a show of determination alone, the man in the hood pushed from his legs and lifted from his shoulders until his back was standing straight once more. The bars fell aside. He grabbed at the thinner bar that had pushed through his side, and simply forced it back out. It was like he did not feel pain at all. No, he did, she could tell from the way his fingers were shaking after the fact.

In the shadow of his hood covering his face she saw a pure white smile appear. He grabbed one of the iron beams and threw it through the air, she had to jump to get out of the way. She hit the ground, rolled, and stood up once more. Junko watched her eyes processing the new information, as the hoodied strangeer simply stood there with his thumbs in the pockets of his black jeans.  
  
“Oh! I understand now! I was wondering what this was since it wasn’t on the schedule! You… you’re an original utlimate despair aren’t you? The knock offs are supposed to take the originals place, but if I fight you that would seriously reduce the number of lame combat scenarios I have to go through, riiiiiiiight?”

He walked towards her, holding his hands open at his side. The world was probably crawling with battle happy maniacs, and serial killers right now that its despair had been unleashed. She did not even need to know the particular details of what he was talking about, it bored him.  
  
However, he seemed to notice the difference between an utlimate despair, and the remnants of despair he had been fighting a moment ago. Not only that but he recognized her as a stronger despair than the bears right away, even though her disguise was flawless! Well, if Enoshima Junko was dead in this world he would probably think she was just an admirer dressed up like her.  
  
“What do you say… original?”

Junko was, so bored she did not even want to bother fighting. If she just surrendered maybe he would be the one to kill her. She could not believe she had to die again after dying.  
  
“Why did you fight just now?”  
  
Maybe.  
He would show her something interesting. Maybe this stranger would make her laugh.  
  
He frowned. Pouting. “Ummm… can we just fight?”  
  
“You seem strong. It doesn’t sound like anybody’s forcing you to do anything. It’s not like you’re all those innocent people out there trying to survive, so why did you tear up those people like that? Trying to play the hero? The villain?”  
  
“Reason? What’s my reason?” So much time had passed she did not even notice night had fallen until she saw the stranger suddenly lift his hand up from the long sleeves of his sweater and snatch away at the moon above them. “That’s easy. My goal is to acquire absolute power. Not the power of despair, or hope, nothing that insignificant. I’m talking about the kind of power that will even thinking about challenging me. If nobody fights me, then I’ll never lose again. That’s why I’m going to take them all down. From the bottom to the top, I’m going to tear down  each of the sixteen ultimate despairs so they’ll know I’m the strongest in the world. I heard behind the scene there’s another one who manipulates everything from a god on high, so if I kill him that means I’m stronger than god right? Nobody will mess with a guy like that. ”

“Okay, so standard anime villain reasons. Cool, cool. Wait, not cool at all lame. That’s the reason you killed all those people right then?”

He brought his hand down and flexed his fingers staring at them casually. He did not seem to grasp the gravity of the conversation at all, and just kept chatting, casually, uselessly. “You make it seem so dirty. Stop talking like I’m a murderer. I’m fighting things not real people. They’re empty, they get brainwashed with the push of a button and become shells of their former selves. You can’t kill something that’s not alive to begin with.”

Unable to live. Unable to die. Living from one injection of emotion to the next, unable to control herself, just looking for a fix, that was right she was no better than the despair flunkies, the bottom grade worshippers she was looking down on.

“What nothing to say? Why are we talking so much anyway…. Oh, I get it. All you can do is analyze and predict right? That means all you can do is watch.” His head collapsed forward as he started to shake with his laughter, and then he threw it back. “Ahahahaha! Oh wow, I didn’t think someone who called themselves ultimate would turn out this boring! Alright, now it’s my turn to play. You’re in pretty rough shape though so I’m not expecting too much. __Kami-phatom.”  
  
His white smile was like that of an animal, proudly displaying all of his fangs as he got closer and closer to her. Then suddenly, he vanished and appeared behind her instead.  
  
“At least try to keep me entertained! Make me feel that despair! Knock me down a little bit like you did those iron beams, the more I fall down, the more fun it is crawling my way back up!”

She dodged his move but just barely. Then the next one after that. He was chaining an entire combo of blows, but she knew what buttons he was going to press before he even pressed them.  
  
Then he seemed to figure it out, the source of her predicting ability. He picked up an iron bar and slammed it down where she was standing. She jumped into the air just at the right time, and spun her body kicking his face into the half constructed wall.  
  
“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! It hurts ever so slightly! Why am I fighting, what is the meaning of this? It’s hurting me more than it hurts you!” 

He babbled right as his head slammed into it, which meant his mouth was open.  
  
Slowly,in dramatic fashion his head fell back. She saw one his teeth fly away from the rest of his white smile. He grabbed it in the air. “Tee-hee-hee-teeth.”  
  
She slammed her leg down to finish her combo, but he moved faster than he had a moment ago and moved his entire body back straightening it out. He pushed the tooth back into the gap in his mouth and flashed a smile at her. “For-tooth! Now, now, now! Thumb attack!”    
  
Junko realized she could not dodge out of the way. Even though she saw the attack coming, she was in the air and she was not a super high school level gymnast, body builder, or a fighting based character like her sister. Two thumbs rushed towards her eyes and pushed into them. In the next moment she felt the light extinguish from the world around her.  
  
Inside her own head, it was like living in a dark cave only able to view the world through two pinpricks of light that were her eyes, and suddenly they had closed up. She fell to the ground covering the bloody holes they were left of her eyes. She heard a squelch, as the man in front of her dropped her eyeballs onto the ground and then stepped on them.  
  
She heard it in high detail, as the moment her sight had gone out her brain compensated by turning her hearing way up. Not only that she got a general sense of the area around her just by estimating spacially the time it took for sounds to travel towards her. So she basically learned echolocation in five seconds. Cool, whatever. Just kill her already pleased.  
  
However, her attacker seemed to have changed his mind.  
  
“There, now you can’t look down on me with those bored looking eyes anymore. Bye, bye! It was nice playing with you!” She heard the sound of him stuffing his hands in his pockets, as he left her alive just like that.  
  
She could not even get angry though because when she thought about it this was exactly what she wanted. She was tired of looking at a world that never changed before her eyes, and that she could not change either. It was boring staring at a world she could not even reach out and touch. At least this way she would not have to watch anymore.  
  
Now that she thought about it, this was exactly the escape she wanted. If only she could gauge out her eardrums as well and not have to listen to the noises that never changed, now that she had stopped watching the scenery that never changed, and that sky, always that same sky.  
  
It was a relief. If she did not see, or hear, she would no longer be aware, and if she was not aware she would not know how bored she was. Of course her analysis was a pain as it perfectly displayed the environment around her only using data taken in from sound and touch. She could survive even with her two eyes ripped out.

 

😈

  
She could no longer tell when the sun rose and set though, except for the differences in temperature she noticed after awhile. So losing all sense of time, she just passively observed and reacted in the dark. Grateful she no longer had to look at the ruined city, or the stupid people.  
  
She had no idea how much time passed. Because she was just being dragged along unwillingly from one moment to the next. That did not bother her particularly though, because this was how she had always lived.  
  
There was no color for her in the world. So it might as well have all been pitch black to her. White was the combination of all colors, and black the absence of all colors, and she was glad she could no longer see either or distinguish between the two.  
  
She had bandaged up her eyes to stop herself from dying of an infection, because that was a gross way to die. She found food easily enough by smell, and sound. None of the food tasted good, so eventually she just stopped bothering.

  
How much time had passed. She was not paying attention. Whatever small amount of despair she had gotten livin day to day with sensory deprivation was gone now. She had gotten bored of that too. Ajimu did not talk to her either, and she did not even bother to strike up conversations with the residents of this world that never was because they were nothing more than nps to her.  
  
She felt empty. But then she realized it was not philoshpical emptiness but rather hunger. Her body was weakening as well.  It seemed forgetting to eat was having an affect on her. Then it occurred to her she could simply die like this. She could literally die of boredom. Rotting away on the inside. Like a rotten apple. Simply because she could not be bothered. That was fitting for her. That was how a person like her deserved to die.  
  
Faced with the end of the world, the end of the world she caused, she could not even be happy that her plan was successful and enjoy all that misery, nor could she regret her actions. She wished she could feel regret, then she could live the rest of her life consumed by that regret and feel much more like a person.  
  
She once felt self loathing and some kind of tearing apart for her actions, for the kind of desperate person she was and what she did to the others around her, the people she loved like Matsuda, the classmates she loved like Kyoko, she sustained herself getting addicted to that feeling of self loathing, she fell in love with how horrible she was, but now she was too far away from those people. That pain had dulled a long time ago. Her sense of self had dulled too. Too distant.

She forgot. What did she look like again? What did she act like? Even the personality changing gimmick seemed like just a lame gimmick to her in retrospect.

She heard the meow of a kitten in front of her. Its meows became desperate, hungry mewlings. Just like she thought, it was just going to starve to death.  
  
Seriously.  
We are both in such crappy positions.  
She thought turning her head towards the kitten.  
She reached both of her hands towards it. She petted it softly for a moment before picking it up and squeezing it. If it could not live on its own anyway it deserved to die. It had been born to die. It had been born to come to an end.  
  
Shit, how much longer? How much longer will it take for this thing to die? How long will my body last? How long will my consciousness last? Shit. Not enough destruction. Still not enough destruction. GOtta destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy destroy destroy. Destroy more. This most miserable. Too miserable life. Too miserable dream. Reality. With the rest of her strength.  
  
Then suddenly someone grabbed her hands and pulled them apart, letting the mewling kitten escape, grasping from her, it ran away desperate for its life, even though it was on the brink of starvation anyway.

  
Then suddenly Junko heard a voice behind her, smashing apart the quiet, destroying it. “Ehhhh? Why are you so skinny all of a sudden? You on a diet or something? I don’t get beautiful people like you.”  
  
The same voice from before. The man who plucked out her eyes. He found her again. He stopped her from killing a kitten. He made no sense at all.  
  
“...I’m fine.”  
  
“Hmm? You don’t look fine. What happened to your eyes? Did you trip and get them gauged out. Such a clusmy girl, tee hee hee.”

“Nah, I’m really fine. I guess it’s okay. I was forcing it before. I don’t have to make a choice. A futureless future… I think it’s fine if that exists too. As long as i don’t yearn for despair, I’ll never need to hope for it. I’m just gonna free myself from the curse.”  
  
“What are you saying? Existing is just a curse? A pretty little thing like you… shouldn’t say that. Suffer a little bit more before you start spouting pretentious nonsense!”

  
“Nah, No thanks. I’ll just starve to death. Failing at basic living sounds right up my alley right now.”

Suddenly, he grabbed her by the head. He forced her down, but he did not do anything to her. He simply grabbed the beef jerky that she smelled stuff into his pockets and then forced it into her mouth.  
  
When she spat it out, this time he chewed it for her and shoved his face onto hers so it would be forced down her throat. He decided all of that on an impulse. Even though he was the one who ripped her eyes out, he selfishly decided to deny her death. She had no idea what was going through his mind, but then again she did not care either.  
  
He was mindlessly violent. He was just driven to fight the same way the despairs he was fighting, just existing moment to moment, looking for the next hit of adrenaline. He would live the rest of his life mindlessly following like that, his status queue was violence and he would never break free, then he would die suddenly just like that in an unsatisfying way. In front of her he might as well not even be alive, she did not even need eyes to see his whole life laid out before him.  
  
A moment later she wiped the drool from her face. “Groooooooss. I’m getting stalked by a groosssss guy.”

“You’re the idiot who forgot how to eat.”  
  
“I didn’t forget how to eat, I just did not see the philosophical point in continuing to eat.”

“Then you’re a philosophical idiot.” She heard him clap his hands together. “Then you’re lucky to run into me. I really am a good person, I found this girl who has been blind since birth and I’ll care for her even in a ruthless world like this. They should put me on the cover of shonen jump already.”  
  
Blind since birth.  
She might as well have been. After all everybody else could see the light except her. Everybody else could find a reason to keep living, to keep moving forward, to see the thing called hope except for her.  
Being the only one was…  
  
“It’s cold.”  
  
“Then why didn’t you say so, you philosophical idiot.” She heard him unzip his jacket, and suddenly it was around her shoulders.  
  
“Ewe, I can do without some sweaty creep’s jacket.”  
  
“You’re the one who was complaining she was cold.”  
  
“It was just a metaphor, like being a part of the world but unable to feel its warmth.”  
  
“Yeah, I think that’s just because it’s winter.”

“Ugh, you’re not getting it at all. I’m sorry this is too deep for you to jump right in and swim in all that delicious juicy despair my statements are full of.”  
  
“Hmm? How would I swim, we’re on concrete?”

“I… you... “  
  
She heard him stand up. Then, the striking of metal against metal, and a sound like scraping metal until finally she felt a little bit more warmth. That was how long it took her to process the idiocy of the person in front of her.  
  
“How did somebody as stupid as you survive the end of the world exactly?”  
  
At which point he hesitated. “Huh…?” He seemed genuinely confused. “The world ended?”

“You…”  
  
“Oh wait I thought I heard about that on the news like a year ago but I assumed it all blew over.”

“You didn’t notice? The constant tumoil on the streets? Death looming around every corner? Tragedy, after tragedy, after tragedy? No hope in sight? Living amongst misfortune?”

“Eh…? But that’s just my daily life and…”  She heard the sound of paper turning in his hands. “Shonen jump is still running. As long as there are still stories to tell, the world can’t have ended.”

“The world ended.”  
  
“I don’t see any proof.”  
  
“Just look around you.” Junko could not anymore, but she still gesture wildly. She could not remember the last time she had gotten so dramatic for a conversation. “The conclusion has been fucking reached!”  
  
“If that’s the conclusion than I disagree with it.”  
  
“You can’t just disagree with the world! You’re obviously wrong, physically, look around you, everything’s broken! It is literally, the omega, end times, fucking get over it already!”

“Then, I philosophically disagree!”  
  
Immediately she spoke in a melancholy voice. “He’s so stupid he just ruined philosophy forever. This is pointless. So saaaad.” Then she changed again speaking in a cutesy voice.”So anyway, cutie what’s your deal? Do you jack it to disabled girls? Or are you just a terrible human being who blinds girls and then bullies them? Bullies aren’t kyu-ute at all!”

“She said I’m a terrible human being. That means she’s acknowledging I’m a human being, yes!” He fist pumped the air. His standards were apparently very low.  
  
“Come oooooon, just tell me something already. I’m dying to hear something to break up the monotony. You’ve got to have more motivation than just being a bad anime villain, if you’re going to live your life putting on an act at least put on a good one for me!”

“I’m your childhood friend that’s waited to reunite with you all this time.”  
  
“That’s a lie.”  
  
“In the past life we were enemies, and now we’re forced to be allies.”  
  
“Also a lie.”  
  
“It’s a common story. I had two friends, a guy and a girl, they were like childhood friends well the closet thing for someone like me. I didn’t get to see them a lot, but when I did I had lots of fun with them. I connected deeper with them than anybody else. We were three people. Unlike me, they talked a lot. They were strong people. I didn’t have anything besides to the two of them…Even though I graduated high school and parted ways from them, I thought if they were apart from me they’d be safe.”  
  
She was surprised, to see him talking with such sincerely suddenly.  
  
“Before I met them, I thought this world was nothing but misfortune, but because I met them… my world changed….her especially, I felt her will to live.her life force. And it was… it was … beautiful. Then one day, the guy showed up in front of me and told me he couldn’t protect her. The guy that killed my friend, was a twenty year old kid, apparently he gets called a reaper. It wasn’t dramatic or anything like that, she wasn’t killed by a powerful enemy either, it was just bad luck. Apparently, serves some other nineteen year old girl who calls herself ultimate despair.”  
  
She head the sound of a sniffle, and then that man messily wiped at his face. She reached a hand forward touching the side of his face and felt his tear soaked cheek. He was dripping, and leaking out all sorts of emotions. “The days we spent together were the only things keeping me stitched up… it’s not like I wanted something stupid like for them to be happy I just wanted… to keep having fun with them.”  
  
“So, revenge is what the sitch is huh? Laaaaaaaame. I told you to enertain me and you couldn’t even do that, you really are useless. Don’t you know, in this world Enoshima Junko is dead. She died in that killing game, what you’re doing is pointless.”

“Hmm…? What are you talking about?”  
  
Junko wondered if she was going to have to explain what the killing game was to this idiot, she really did not want to do another plot recap.  
  
“Enoshima Junko isn’t dead. Her killing game was foiled at stage one.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I saw it on tv. Apparently, one of the students regained his memory by random chance in the gacha machine and protected her sister right as she was about to kill her. Then sister turned against sister and turned despair into hope, they all escaped alive and Enoshima Junko vanished.”  
  
“Mukuro did what…?”  Junko stopped, stunned for a moment.  
  
“Well, it’s not exactly revenge. I don’t think I could hate her. I just feel sorry for her. I can’t have any fun because I don’t have my friends around anymore… and I get the same sense as her, no matter how much she smiled or appeared on live television, ranting about despair, it didn’t look like she was having any fun at all.”

“Hey, idiot.”  
  
She snapped at him suddenly.  
  
“Are you really going to say something as stupid as life lost all meaning when I lost my friends? Isn’t it obvious it had no meaning to begin with. There was nothing special about your friends at all, there’s no special people either.”  
  
“No meaning, no special people…?” He wiped at his face quickly. “Those are really, optimistic words.”  
  
“What? No I’m telling you there’s no hope at all. Fall into despair please, or are you too stupid to despair properly too.”  
  
“If there’s no meaning, if they weren’t so special, then I didn’t lose that much to begin with. Here I was thinking I had lost something so unbelievably precious I couldn’t keep on living! This is really freeing, like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders. Now I think I can try again!”  
  
“No, that’s not the conclusion you were supposed to draw at all! What are you broken? Why do you have it ass backwards? Ugh this is so annoying-”  
  
“If it’s annoying then why are you smiling? I think this is a fun conversation! I didn’t know I’d get such an insight by a stranger like you.”  
  
“I didn’t give you an insight. Go back to pointlessly seeking revenge until you die an empty death.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Do it. You gotta. You can’t change your mind that easily.”  
  
“Nu-uh you can’t make me.” The man threw his head back in laughter. “Doesn’t it just make you laugh? Well? That’s right. I’m a small fry. I admit that. I’m just a powerless punk. A dog. A minro-leaguer. A half baked piece of shit good for nothing. I don’t despise what happened to me. I’m thankful I got everything taken away. I’m thankful for this weakness. Because I know how good it feels to crawl up from the pits.” He got up energetically and turned around as though in a dance. “And once you feel this pleasure you can’t go back. So I’m gonna start climbing from now on! This is gonna be my foothold! The fact that I’m the weakest means that I can enjoy the feeling of my own growing strength more than anyone else! Watch me struggle and climb like an unsightly weakling! The fact that I’m insignificant, the fact that I’m worthless, the fact that my efforts will mean nothing, I’m so thankful, and most of all I’m thankful for Junko-chan! Thank you for pushing me down, uprooting me, kicking me down like this so I can climb my way back up! Again and again as many times as it takes, and I’m gonna have so much more damn fun than you doing it! Don’t you know it’s miserable people who laugh the loudest.”  
  
In this dead world.  
In the end of the world.  
There was this one person, this one flickering sign of light, he was like a single flame amongst a tundra.  
That person in front of her was really living.  
But he was living so loudly he attracted attention.  


She heard footsteps all around her. In a few moments they were surrounded. The gangs of roving bear masks remnants of despair that he had been picking off had finally cornered him, because he stopped to talk with her, because he made such a loud fuss right now. He could probably just break in the opposite direction and leave her behind.

Instead suddenly, he picked up the fire and threw it at her. She heard the sound of crackling paper. Oh, he had not been burning wood, paper? A magazine? Weekly shonen jump? He threw the fire in one of the punks faces and then, turned over and pushed her over. He pushed her onto the ground and shielded her with his back.  
  
The mob hit him like a wave and the violence surrounded him. He was hit. Kicked. Wooden boards were broken over his head. His entire body shook with the violence he was enduring. It was not like he did not feel pain at all.  
  
“What are you doing, just leave me. I don’t even want to live.”  
  
“Who said you got to decide that? We weren’t done with our conversation yet, I haven’t had so much fun talking with someone in so long…”  
  
“Leave me alone already.”  
  
“No, you’re not alone. Nobody’s alone. Even if I were to run away with you right now, the memory of our conversation will linger in your mind forever, ahahaha, I won’t lose!”  
  
“Misogi you idiot! You literally tried to kill me earlier, don’t play hero now.”    
  
If it was not obvious enough already.  
Somehow by chance, she had run into Kumagawa even in this world where the two of them never met. Where he attended Sandbox academy, and did not know what Hope’s Peak, or Ultimate Hope, or Ultimate Despair was.  
  
She wondered if it was his bad luck or hers.  
  
“I changed my mind!”  
  


He shouted back at her.  
He really did make it look so easy.  
  
“Once I talked to you, I changed my mind.”  


The sound of bone being cut, the sound of blood vesseles being ripped, the sound of skin being torn. Echoed. That sound unplesasantly, yet somehow pleasantly echoed. Until Kumagawa, the Kumagawa who had fallen into despair was left on top of her nothing more than a lifeless husk. Protecing her the entire time, she had reached up and touched his face, and when she felt his face wrinkle into a smile she knew it was him.  
  
Even when she could not see, even when there was no light at all, somehow she had seen that smile, that smile’s light guided her.  
  
She rolled out from under him after the despair mob got bored and left. She heard him groan when he hit the ground.  
  
“How are you still alive? Whatever, just use all fiction to undo those wounds.”  
  
“All fiction? What’s that?” He murmured. “I don’t remember…”

"Then it wasn't all fiction it was just... it was just you all along. You... you're..."  
  
A human being.   
Humans can try again as many times as they want. That was what Kaiki, the man she had killed had said. 

 

😈

Dying then resurrecting.   
What a fruitless calculation, like dividing by two after multiplying by two, and that was coming from a girl who lived by fruitless calculations. For who everything worked out neatly, everything summed up to zero before her eyes.   
  
What would have happened if she had not met Kumagawa back then?  
If she had found some way to ignore him, like she tuned out every other loser on the planet.  
She thought and dreamed about it even now.  
All this time she had been acting like she got dragged along into somebody else's show, like a character transferred and crossed over into a different script. Like strings had wrapped around her neck, her wrists, her ankles, and dragged her. Like her body moved on its own.   
  
However, she could have just as easily left him alone. She could leave this Misogi she found in this world that never was by the side of the road, to either rot like a dog's corpse stuck in the gutter, or get up dust himself off like he usually did and forget all about her. Instead, she slide one arm in the crook of his knees and one arm behind his neck and lifted him up. Carrying that useless waste of mass made her walk even slower, but she did it regardless.   
  
As she walked towards the outskirts of the city, Kumagawa's sleeping body bobbing in her arms as she did she saw. She saw without seeing, as it was simply  a mental image, her eyes were all bandaged up still. But she could tell from the surface she was walking on, when the toe of her boot accidentally knocked against it once that she had taken a shrotcut through an abandoned rail yard. 

Empty sets of railroad tracks extended in front of her. They went forward in a straight line, they criss crossed, they diverged at points, they overlapped illogically, they ran into each other again and again, they parted forward, they spiraled, spiraled, spiraled out in directions that even she who predicted and foresaw everything could not see. If one looked at the whole of it, it would look like a beautiful tree blossoming in every direction but ti was impossible to see the beauty simply walking with your head facing forward. She was walking along one of those tracks.  
  
As she continued to walk next to her on a parallel track there was a boy and girl walking. Just like the time Ajimu had forced her to see those versions of herself, running all over hope's peak academy again in so many different directions, walking over and over the same paths again and again. The sight of so her doing the same thing over and over, of her walking in the same steps, had overwhelmed her so much she thought her brain might melt from the boredom overloading her synapses, and then drain out of the side of her ear.   
  
That first they met Kumagawa decided not to kill her. She did not know the whole story as she had been knocked unconscious first, but apparently her foolish sister had grabbed onto his ankle and begged for both of their lives. It was fitting of a dog to beg, Junko could not even imagine being so desperate to live that she would beg. Another way in which she would never comprehend her sister. But apparently, Kumagawa decided to take responsibility for saving her.   
  
He made a choice. He chose to save her. Instead of killing her, he decided he would walk alongside her preventing her from further damaging the school. It was because of that choice, his life became hell.   
  
Next to her on the tracks Kumagawa and herself were walking side by side. It was the Kumagawa she first met all the way back then, the one who wore a president's arm band around one of his arms, and fooled around with his phony student council. Those days all she thought was, she needed to kill him and her life would go back to normal. Her plan would be back on track without a single hitch. She genuinely did not think anything about her life hand changed at all. She saw several of the Ultimate Despairs gang up on Kumagawa and then, he did not die. She did not kill him. She could have, but she did not as well. Her life did not return to her previous state of being. Even with sixteen shadows ganging up on him from all around him, Kumagawa broke free of them and jogged to catch up with the image of her. She was never able to kill him in the end it seemed.   
  
Then the tracks split apart and diverged. She threw away Kumagawa for awhile. Junko even with her eyeballs missing, somehow managed to glare at the image of Kumagawa next to her, playing around with Medaka and Zenkichi and walking behind the two of them. Two train rails that were running in parallel, split off. Yes, back then it was like Kumagawa went to some far away place. Even if they were still at the same school, he looked like he belonged with those two far more than he ever did with her.   
  
Now that she thought about it it could have been so easy. Kumagawa could have killed her, and then be declared the savior of Hope's Peak Academy. In that case he would probably have been accepted back into the arms of his estranged middle school friends, they would view him not as the villain of this story but as the hero. He could have chosen to take the easy road, the one that led him to that secret desire of his of playing the hero.   
  
A villain that wants to play hero.   
Comical, utterly comical.  
It was as much of a laugh as someone who finds hope in despair.  
A girl who hopes for despair like herself.  
Yeah, that was what she wanted, to stop hoping for despair, to escape from that. So damn hopeless. It would be easier this way.   
  
Then, why did they choose this path?  
The tracks converged again. Kumagawa found her body stabbed on the side of the road. At that point they were no longer friends, and she told him they never had been, she had siply been putting up with an annoyance. He could go back to being friends with Medaka and the others if he just left her behind and yet he rushed forward and picked her body up. He brought her to the hospital and waited there. Perhaps his body moved on its own. Perhaps he was not even thinking about it. He just wanted to save a girl in front of him without really considering the consequences.  
  
However, she hoped that was not the case, as she continued to walk along these tracks she was starting to realize. There's no such thing as a body moving on its own, there's no such thing as getting dragged along unwillingly. There was no such thing as just being in on it for the ride.   
  
She looked up far above, and saw the image of herself about to plummet in the river. That was right even after all of that time spent together with Kumagawa, she still wished to drown in the river like that famous author. As she saw the falling version of herself, her dress rippling in the wind like a red curtain calling for the show to be over Kumagawa's hand still reached after her. As she was falling, he ran to catch her. Knowing the show was over, knowing the audience had already applauded, knowing it did not make a difference he still did that. 

Railroad tracks break apart and move in many different directions, and often you can only choose between them and once you make that choice you cannot easily break free from the railroads. Just like a river breaks apart in many directions, rivers sprawl endlessly, cascading into smaller and smaller streams but in the end all they can do is rush forward. No matter which direction a river bends in, they all end up in the smae place too, they will all end in the ocean.  
  
Because in the moment he acted, he rushed forward and tried to take her hand and catch her as she fell, Kumagawa was dragged into tragedy. He could have blamed her for it, but the only one he ever blamed was himself for trying to catch her in that moment. Despite the fact that it was a decision that led them both to drown... she had the feeling...  
  
She had the feeling for some reason, no matter how many times she threw herself off that balcony, Kumagawa would always choose to catch her. She saw the image of herself falling through the air like a princess, and Kumagawa without any hesitation held his hands out for her. Slowly, slowly, slowly falling like snow. That was right in a snow storm it was like that too, snowflakes were not just falling down, every single one of them fell in a unique direction, they caught the wind, they fluttered on the wind, they were carried by it for a little while, before spiraling, spiraling, spiraling, down, but if you looked at it as a whole it became a white mass, indistinct, it looked all the same.  Even in that circumstance, as delicate as she was Kumagawa would hold out his hand to catch her. 

He was a fool, but it was not like he had no idea what he was doing. It was not like he acted without thinking.   
Again and again, in all of these circumstances, in these branching pathways Kumagawa chose her.   
And it could have worked out differently. If Kumagawa had chosen differently, he could have met someone else, fell in love.   
This was what he had chosen though.   
This pathway she was on right now, it was not magic, fate, destiny, or Ajimu Najimi's meddling, it was just the result of choices.   
Choices piling up on choices.   
They ended up choosing each other again and again, as difficult of a choice as it was.   
That was right, she had chosen too.   
She was not just some onlooker, if she had no chosen, then she would not be walking by his side right now.   
The fact that it could have worked out differently if they chose differently, did not make those choices meaningless.  
Because this was what they chose, it had meaning.   
  
It was not like she was locked on either.   
Perhaps it was hard for trains to get off tracks once they were on it, but that was only if you had never caused a good train accident or train derailing in your life.   
She supposed she could just let Kumagawa go if she wanted to.  
She did not want to.   
How embarrassing to admit.   
She did not want to stop playing her part in these circumstances either. She still had to step on stage and say her line.   
How doubly embarrassing to admit. 

She left the railway field and climbed a set of steps. The steps seemed to spiral around her, sometimes the steps diverged too, and the steps moved up and down in illogical patterns, she felt like she was making her way through an mc excher painting trying to comprehend the dimmensions of all these choices.  
  
But eventually somehow, she made her way up the mountain to a shrine. The shrine where Ajimu Najimi was waiting for her. She heard the sound of a door sliding open.    
Ajimu Najimi was waiting for her there.  
She sat on the edge of the porch letting her feet sink into the water, kicking it idly in impatience. Junko could hear the sound of her splashes.  
  
In this world where Kumagawa had met her, he had no all fiction, no immortality, no magic solution to wipe away the end of the world, but out here he someone more unfortunate than anybody else was still laughing and living even under extreme circumstances. He was still enjoying his completely worthless life.  
  
In this world where everything went according to her plan, somehow her useless sister of all people had been the one to choose hope over despair at last moment and subvert her entire plan. Just because Naegi Makoto had remembered her, and called her name out at the last second.   
  
Kumagawa met her.  
Makoto met Mukuro.   
  
Why was that again?  
Because he changed, moment to moment.  
She thought that was what made him special, but Kumagawa was not a special person he was just your average loser.  
The reason he was able to change.  
She let Kumagawa’s body rest in front of Ajimu’s.  
  
“It’s people isn’t it?”

Kumagawa valued people more than anybody else.  
When he came into contact with them.  
Het let himself be changed by them.  
  
“I get it now. I was trying to change the world, but I should have been trying to change the people. If people can change, if people can change just by meeting one another then maybe they’re not so predictable.”

People meet.  
Talk to each other.  
Nobody lives without even meeting another person once.  
Everybody lives influenced by everyone around them.  
  
“People meeting each other… changing each other… that’s just a story. That other Junko’s got it all wrong, if she’s seeing fiction as overlapped onto reality she shouldn’t be saying that nobody changes because good stories are all about change."

She turned her head to Ajimu, even as blind as she was right now.  
  
“Anshin’in-san. I don’t want it to end like this. I haven’t lived yet. If I die I won’t be able to change anymore, but if I live, that’s the only way anything will change. It’s not like I’m going to grow up, I’ll never be complete, like anybody else, like my surroundings but… I think, even someone who was born in a cult, or someone who was pampered and told she was beautiful all her life they can still change.”  
  
If those two people were to meet, what kind of unlikely story would be told. It was so simple, she had been overthinking it this entire time. Running equation after equation when all she needed to grasp was one plus one equals two.  
  
Ajimu sighed looking back at the overly excitable girl. She really was like an annoying young sister. “Junko-chan you know, one of those situations is clearly way harder than the other to cope with. They’re not as comparable as you think.”  
  
“I know my life is way more terrible than MIsogi’s, but it’s okay, I have lots of that empathy stuff so I’ll just rub it on him to show him I can understand his pain even though I’m way worse off.”  
  
“Junko-chan, what do you think empathy is?”  
  
“I dunno like a brand of moisturizer? Or like chap stick? Or maybe lotion.”  
  
“Junko-chan, you changed your mind without destroying the world a second time how surprising.”  
  
“I still think what I said back the was true. I'll hold onto my immature beliefs until I die. I wasn’t born to enjoy life. I wasn’t born to be like anybody else. I don’t fit in with this world, if that's the case I want to live. Because the world is telling me I can’t, because it’s going to take all my happiness away the moment I feel it, I want to live. I still lived. I want to steal away whatever happiness I can in spite of the world. Do you know how amazing I am? Everybody else can look at a rose colored world and laugh in their carefree lives. But I’m going to look at a colorless, dreary, miserable world and I’m going to laugh twice as hard at it!”

She ran out of energy, leaning back against the paper wall. As she slid to the floor, she wrapped her hands around her knees. She looked quite girlish for once. Even Ajimu noticed she looked like a girl of her own age.  
  
“This situation really is just the pits. I mean, somebody’s stealing my identity and they’re doing it better than me right now, and I’m too busy losing my mind to care. It’s the absolute worst, and even if I go back I’ll probably just lose. But I bet if Misogi were here he would say, even if you’re losing a game you gotta play to the end, why? Because the longer a game goes on the more fun. You have obviously. I can’t believe how low I’ve fallen. But you know. I’m going to try climbing back up too. I want to see if it’s as fun as that loud mouth says it is.”

 _It was so obvious I had forgotten._ _  
_ _I came to the brink of death many, many times, and each time, I narrowly escaped death._ _  
_ _Because of that I had completely forgotten._

“You’ve gotten really excitable now that you’ve discovered the meaning of life.” Ajimu deadpanned. “I thought you were refusing to learn a lesson.”  
  
“I didn’t learn a thing, not at all. To say there was a shift in the meaning was wrong. There was plenty of meaning already, merely by staying alive. Actually, there’s no meaning at all. There’s no one meaning. It kept changing. I was just making it up as I was going along, but life gave me plenty of material, I was able to laugh at all sorts of things and people.”

"I feel like you're making up this whole speech as you go along, trying to get a laugh out of me." 

Junko ignored Ajimu's heckling and kicked the unconscious Kumagawa right then, and poked him face with her toe until she woke up. She kneeled over his body and whispered in his ears. “Misogi, go find that Ikusaba Mukuro girl. She’ll take care of you. She’s a good for nothing, and you’re nothing, so she’s probably good for you.”

Ajimu looked back at her. “Why are you bothering to do that? For all you know this world isn’t real.”  
  
“What does it matter if it’s not real? It was a fun story, I was able to feel a little bit from it. Just like you, Anshin’in-san, you’re not real but you piss me off to no end.”

She sat next to Ajimu Najimi, taking her boots off finally and letting her toes sink into the water. She asked it suddenly, out of the blue. “Anshin’in-san, are you really dead?”

“I am.”  
  
“I don’t believe it.”  
  
“I can’t go back to that world anymore. I was using the last of my life force to wait here for you, now I'm giving it to you as your one and only revive."  
  
"Just one? I thought the message was you can keep trying as many times as you want. God, way to be off theme. If this ends terribly it's all your fault."   
  
"Sorry about that, it's like first love, or a first kiss, it only works once."

At that moment Junko’s sight returned to her. She reached up and saw that her eyes were still bandaged, and realized she was not seeing her own perspective but rather through the eyes of Ajimu Najimi who was right next to her. Ajimu Najimi put her hands on the wooden deck of the shrine they were sitting on, on the very edge.   
  
She was much like the water, rocking back and forth. Even though the water is moved by random molecular dispersion, even though waves are the result of the transfer of energy  from the wind to the water to the point where it seems unpredictable, the entire ocean moves in predictable motions. For example the tide comes in, and then it comes out again. Waves will continually, ceaselessly, beat back against the shore. Ajimu Najimi seemed like that in this moment, she was entirely calm like the unmoving body of water, she was calmed by the inevitability of the waves hitting the shore.   
  
However, in spite of that inevitability she stared forward at the water in front of her. She no longer saw the massive and dark body of water. What she saw was a field of flowers blooming out in front of her. Flowers were malleable things, they could cahnge from season to season. Their seeds could be blown away and sprout elsewhere. Someone could step on a flower. They could be pulled up, their petals torn into pieces. Looking at the flowers as a whole, it was like looking at a painting whose colors slowly shifted over time, and would never go back to the previous color pattern again. The moment you saw it, and looked away, even if you turned your head back you would never be able to see those specific colors again.  
  
Flowers are short. They usually only bloom for one season, and only once and have to be replanted and replaced after that. For a long lived being such as herself, who could blink and in the next moment see the flowers were completely gone and replaced with a barren field it almost seemed absurd to appreciate their beauty. However, for that moment, that single blink of an eye five years ago Kumagawa nad her had been playing around in that field of flowers.  
  
Kumagawa finally caught up to her and tossed her over his head causing her to fall on the ground. Flowers could bloom many different colors, for instance they could bloom white one season, and then red the next season. A flower garden that was once beautiful could quickly become trampled over and destroyed. To the point where it seemed pointless to look into the past. If it all went to ruin later, if the white things were eventually all going to be dyed in red what was the point of such nostalgiac memories.  
  
Especially when it had been her hands that pulled the flowers from the garden. It was her hands that ripped the flower heads ff and decapitated them. Her hands did it, and she knew she was doing it the entire time. Yet, she watched anyway those two flowers blooming next to one another.   
  
Through her eyes she was viewing a memory of the past. In an old house like this, her and Kumagawa once lived. They walked out of the garden together and sat next to one another on the porch. Kumagawa walked inside and she could hear his tiny sounding footsteps all the way from the porch. By the time he was back outside again, she realized she had been waiting for him to return even though it was only a few seconds.   
He broke an ice cream bar in half and offered half to her. Then, cheekily he took a bite out of her half and laughed.  
  
Ajimu Najimi tilted her head to the side. “Why do you want to go to school? I can literally do anything you know, why would I do something as boring as go to school.”  
  
Kumagawa laughed in her face, spitting up chunks of ice cream. “Ahahaha! But we’ll be there together! That’s what makes it special.”  
  
“You should really stop spending so much time around me, Kumagawa-kun. I’m not human. You’re going to to notice the difference, you’ll hate me in the end.”  
  
“No I won’t! Because… if we stay together.” He grabbed her had then and started to pull her forward. “It’ll be fun! I just know it will!”  
  
Behind him Ajimu frowned. “There’s no way I can have fun, just pretending to be a normal girl. You really are stupid, Kumagawa. Nobody thinks the way you do, because nobody’s stupid enough to think that way in the first place.” Despite that, the past Ajimu easily let herself get dragged along by him.  
  
Growing close together, could just as easily mean that the roots of two plants became inter-crossed, and that they strangled each other to death. As both of them had become so close, that neither of them could get the essential things they needed to live from the soil. So why had they ever been so close in the first place? 

Ajimu said at the edge of the porch, folding paper doors behind her, the patterns on them criss crossing behind her back. Even acknowledging how it all ended, she could not help but smile. It was not the smile she usually gave. A mere imitation, a mockery of a human smile. It almost looked painful to smile. As if she was using muscles in her face that she had never put to use before, or perhaps had been straining to the point of tearing before this point.   
  
Her lips pulled tight, and shook in this painful smile. Between those trembling lips her words escaped like a whisper"Yeah, it was really fun... Kumagawa-kun." 

As she said this, the hogst images of her past self with Kumagawa's past self walked straight through her. As she said this the memory faded off into the background. Remembering it only seemed to hurt her. As the two walked off into the distance, a breeze blew. The flowers uprooted themselves. The wind carried away everything. The flowers carried on the wind, spiraled around for a moment as the wind turned in a circle, and she saw the many different flowers being blown away in many different directions, separating, separating, until they became colors that separated in the sky, many, many, different colors, and even then the colors became washed out. 

Her beautiful garden was gone. The garden of her youth was gone. It was dying, because she was dying. She would not be there to maintain it anymore. Even as she had died, she did not remember feeling this sad. Ajimu Najimi smiled like she was n the brink of tears.   
  
"Well, looks like you're finally awake, Junko-chan... or maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'm going to sleep. I can't hold on much longer, soon we won't be able to talk like this anymore."   
Junko saw her own face suddenly, as Ajimu turned to ask her a question. As she turned Junko's view of the world through Ajimu's eyes collapsed, or rather Ajimu herself collapsed. She did not even have the strength to sit up anymore. That girl's white hair fell all around her like inidividual silk threads that had been thrown into a careless mess. She reached a hand forward and crawled a little bit more, until her head was adjacent to where Junko was sitting clutching at her knees. 

  
"You know once, Kumagawa-kun and I sat right here and watched the sunset. You'll see him again, I know you will. He's waiting for you, you know."   
  
"Mmm..."  
  
"Well, even if you fail to get through to him. I left a message in his head if he dies again, so I guess it doesn't matter what you choose."  
  
"it does matter, what I choose. I'm not going to let him die, like I'd let him cheat on me with some ghost girl he talks to in his dreams."   
  
“Hey, Junko. If I said, I wanted to be born a normal girl, live a normal life, laugh normally, and not worry about pluses or minuses, the normal or the abnormal… If I had a cliche secret wish like that, would you laugh?”  
  
“Of course I’d laugh. That’s completely idiotic. I secretly desired to be human all along, shut it you damn pinocchio. Even if it wasn’t a totally lame and predictable twist, I’m cruel and vindictive so I’d make fun of you anyway.”  
Junko answered without missing a heartbeat.  
She finally unfurled herself from the small cocoon she had bundled herself up in, and stood up stretching her limbs as she looked down at the fading away Ajimu Najimi.   
“But, I guess just this once I’ll laugh with you, not at you.”

As she said that she reached in the air. Suddenly from above the sky, a single string fell down. It wrapped around her hand, in an unbreakable knot.  
  
“Just one spider’s thread huh? Just like Akutagawa."  
  
That was right there was one connection she made in life that she was saved by.   
She needed to go back already and save that person.  
She wanted it to be mutual. A two way connection after all.  
And he was far less interesting to her dead then alive.  
Because she met him, she was able to change a little bit.  
So she wanted to see what kind of change she could bring about in him.   
  
She stopped for a moment. Instead of reviving right away she looked at Ajimu. That girl, falling down her cheek was a single tear. Her eyes were watering. Well it was not like she could leave a miserable person alone like that, she was Enoshima Junko after all.   
  
"If you're thinking something like, my reward after waiting all this time is that you can finally die. I think that's a stupid lesson. Your punishment after living for all this time, should be being forced to live some more, or maybe it's your reward I dunno."   
  
She leaned forward and wiped the tear from Ajimu Najimi's eye. Enoshima Junko gave her a cute girlish smile.   
  
"Oh, and just so you know I don’t actually believe your dead Anshin’in-san. I’m going to hunt you down in the real world, and kill you for good and make Kumagawa feel the despair of losing you all over again. Until then, I’ll see you.”

Ajimu smiled back at her.   
She laughed softly, covering her smile with her hand.  
“If that’s the case I’ll have fun playing with you again. See you, Junko-chan.”  
  
“Yeah. Let’s play again next time.”  
  
In the real world Enoshima Junko opened one eye. She seized life. Her body violently seized with life, and she broke into a coughing fit. Matsuda Yasuke who had been running for dear life, was thrown off completely and dropped her in surprise.  
  
“Ow…”  
  
Living was painful.   
  
“Jeez. Dying was the one good thing you ever did and you’re back already? What a pain. Go die again.”

At the familiar barbs of her childhood friend, Enoshima Junko laughed.  
She grabbed a ribbon from her uniform and pulled it away, wrapping it around the cut on her neck instead. 

“Well if me dying made you happy Yasuke-kun, I guess I'll have to live forever to make you miserable.”  
  
Finally,  
The girl outside the coffin,  
Smiled for real without even thinking about it at all.  
Smiled her real smile. 

 


	35. I Love You / Do You Love Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kumagawa's fight with Emonzaemon is a reference to Katanagatari.  
> The song lyrics are taken from Dororo.  
> Emonzaemon's backstory is a reference to D. Gray Man I just finished watching the anime adaptation of the kanda arc recently. 
> 
> The Shiranui Village redesign is partially based off of ideas from Promised Neverland, and also the Garden from Tokyo Ghoul hence all the flower motifes. Basically think village of lost children against a big scary world.

  _He picked a red flower.  
__To give to her.  
__In her hair.  
__I will put the flower._

Even emptied out completely. Even with his brain scooped out and put in a jar. Even with his body remodeled. He had one memory. With everything else gone, as long as that one memory remained, he could remain himself.  
  
There was a boy and a girl in a field of flowers. White flowers with tiny blossoms outlined by blue in the middle. They were flowers that sat on the side of the river, while a boy drowned calling out their name. Even washed away by water he did not want to be forgotten.

It was a simple memory, a faceless boy and a faceless girl in a field of flowers. They chatted idly, but since a long time ago the words had become muffled out and lost all meaning to him. Perhaps, he never cared in the first place what they had been talking about. All that mattered was that they could sit there together for a moment in the field of flowers.  
  
Flowers were curious things. Most things in nature tried to be as dull as possible, so as to not catch the eye of a predator. Yet, flowers bloomed bright colors. They were bright for just a moment and then faded away. Not only that but they needed to be bright, to smell sweetly, in order to attract animals to bite on them and rip their heads off, smashing their petals between their teeth, or to get insects, bees, butterflies, to steal their nectar.  
  
Their way of reproduction was inherently self destructive. That was the cost of being so beautiful. That was how the boy had come to see it at least. It was just like him, he could travel anywhere in the world, and become anything, but it came at the cost of being broken apart.  
  
It was like beautiful things like flowers, existed to wilt. The beautiful things that flowers symbolized, the poems and meanings about them, existed just to get dirtied. Even though they were together underneath that sun for a time, he could not be happy about it. Because he knew he would be saying goodbye soon. The reason why spring in melancholic is because of the happiness that the warm sunlight brings.

 _Your voice...  
_ _I can hear your voice_ _  
_

Her voice was a reminder that she was her own person. That she had existed on her own. There was something unique about her, her experiences were completely unique. They could not be reproduced ever. “Hey, what’s that poem called?"  
  
“I haven’t really thought about it.”  
  
“Did you write it yourself?" 

“Yeah.”  
  
“You didn’t copy it? You wrote it all on your own? That’s amazing. I didn’t think anybody in his village was capable of creating anything new. You should tell me another story,  it makes me happy.”

“You don’t look very happy. You’re always frowning, _____”

His eyes peeled open and he raised his hand in front of his face looking up at the sky. She let him rest her head in his lap. He gave no response, simply turning his head and mumbling into her lap pressing his lips against the flesh of her thighs.  
  
“How can you keep frowning, when we’re surrounded by these pretty flowers?”  
  
“I hate flowers. They’re seeds are going to be blown away and scattered soon, they can’t stay in one place for long, they can’t stay together, just like us.”  
  
“No, no. They reach towards the sky. They follow the light. They make this world smell good. We’re like this flower.”  
  
He reached up again at the sky. He had no idea at all how this girl could see anything beautiful about this moment. It was like the world existed to destroy beauty for him. That was why he was scared, he was oh so scared to tell her how he really felt. Those three beautiful words, if he uttered them their meaning would be destroyed as well.  
  
He had brought her to the flower field for one reason.  
She had clutched onto his chest and cried. Genuine tears. They were experts at acting and faking emotions, so it took him off guard to see her really cry for the first time. Well, even if he only fell in love with the mask before this, if a crack in the mask appeared and he saw her genuine face he was sure he would fall in love with that too.

  
She held onto him so tightly, her fingers worsened the folds of his robes. “They’re going to test the new procedure on Sode-chan when she comes back. Please, please don’t go anywhere. Once Sode-chan is gone you’re all I’ll have left.”

He hated flowers. He hated beauty as well. However, as he took her to the field of flowers to calm herself down, and watched with his head down as that girl stood up amongst the flowers, his eyes tracing the contours of her back he could not help but think for the first time that flowers were beautiful because she was there in the middle of the garden.  
  
That girl loved flowers. He wished they could live a life, where the two of them could tend to a garden together, very carefully raising the flowers and nurturing them and watching the results of their work. Flowers were meant to be blown away, but if they were picked and cultivated carefully by humans the same flowers would bloom again and again every year. Nobody in this village had time to care for flowers though, the fact that flowers bloomed here at all was a miracle in itself, this was a bed of wildflowers they were sitting in.  
  
He wished that truly in his heart, to spend his life doing something so humble, but he could not. Because the moment the girl had held onto him crying he had already decided in his heart. He would volunteer for the procedure in Sode-chan’s place. He would withstand whatever they did to him, no matter how much of him was erased, he would survive. He would survive and then come back to those two, and help them escape from this place. Go somewhere where they could be themselves.

_I just wanted a garden of my own.  
I guess we weren't even allowed to have that small thing to ourselves.   
The world was going to take it away from us, even after we tried being happy with so little. _

While clinging to her he had resolved already to abandon her. So, he spent his last time among the flowers with her with his head in her lap, listening to her voice. He was sure, as long as he had her voice within him, it did not matter what they did to him, he would be able to stay strong. When they saw each other again, no matter how far he had traveled if she said the words  _welcome home_ he would know he was back where he belonged. 

No matter how much of him changed on the outside, he would keep this memory of the time they spent in the flower field. Just then the bed of flowers he was laying on, changed from the white to the bright red, small and plentiful. They were native to this country of japan. Once, an emperor gave them to a maiden he loved as an apology for neglecting her.

He hoped.  
He hoped she would understand his decision.  
Hope…?  
Hope?  
What was that again?  
Something about looking towards the future.  
But flowers were never meant to have a future to begin with. They bloomed beautifully once.  
Some of them never even bloomed at all.

 😈

“This is seriously a hassle.”

Kumagawa Misogi spoke in his true and honest voice. Him and Iihiko had clashed a few times now, and neither one of them had dealt any damage on the other. He thought this would be like every other fight, where he lost instantly. Especially to an opponent that defeated Medaka and Kamukura so easily.  
  
Iihiko jumped back from the last clash. Gaen had already gotten bored of watching their fight, like two mirror images battling one another and left. However the moment Iihiko jumped back, from the stairway behind them a new face appeared. She fanned herself once with the fan she had stolen from Kurokami Medaka’s body, before folding it and revealing her face, or rather her mask that was Enoshima Junko’s face.  
  
“Princess, coming down her is unnecessary-” Iihiko voiced clearly concerned about her safety.  
  
“I deny that. Kumagawa-kun might die soon, I thought I’d take a look at his face one more time.”

“Even after I mercifully spared his life and only went after Ajimu-san, he still foolishly came here-”

“I know I’m the one who wrote all your dialogue, but you talk too much Iihiko.” Coldly, she cut him off as always. She pointed the folded up fan towards Kumagawa. “Well, it would appear her servant has gone berserk after losing her master. Did you come here to kill us.”

Kumagawa tilted his head to the side. He had no idea why his nonsense was so hard for others to understand. They were living in the same world weren’t they? The world full of nonsense. Was he the only one who saw it? He responded in a dull voice. “You’re wrong. I don’t care about avenging Ajimu-san. I just want to die.”

Iihiko stood protectively in front of Nisenoshima holding his arm out. “I cannot imagine there is any meaning to a fight like this.”

Kumagawa just looked bored. “Your words are nothing but talk. They don’t move me at all.” _I just want to die already. Why do they keep delaying. What a hassle. That attention hungry girl is getting in the way of my death._

“I suppose this is the true strength of yours, now that you’ve thrown away the one thing you’ve valued, your life. Don’t you know, those who are truly strong are the ones who have nothing left to lose.”  
  
“You talk like you knew I would do this from the start.” Kumagawa wondered. If they had killed Ajimu for this exact reason. Hoping to provoke this exact response from him. In that case he was saddened, because Ajimu had to die for such a stupid person like himself.  
  
“I deny that too. Incidentally, I hated Ajimu-san, but I hold no animosity towards you. You can’t blame someone for playing their role so effectively, at least that’s what I think. Well, if you do manage to defeat Iihiko, you can come and try to kill me. If you make it that far.”  
  
“Princess, no you can’t put your life on the line...”  
  
“Iihiko. This is an order. Kill him. Not Medaka-chan, not Kamukura-senpai, only him. If you don’t kill him then never return to me again.”    
  
She denied him. Coldly. Cruelly. WIth royal authority. She smashed his genuine concern for her into pieces. The red queen ordered off with his head. It was a pointless fight, nothing would be gained from the result. All that could be added was another loss. Yet, as they stared at each other from opposite ends of the room neither felt like they could back down.  
  
He had no choice, because what little remained of him under that mask only lived to see her again. He gave into her, just like he gave into every order before that. All he could do was give her a stern warning. “As you wish. But if Kumagawa kills me and you here, your plan will never come to fruition.”  
  
“That’s true… However, you may not have realized it yet, but I’m a very denying kind of person. I want to see my plans destroyed just as much as I want to see them completed. I trust that you’ll show me one way or the other.”

As she said that she disappeared up the stairway once more, exiting stage right, or so it seemed that way. Her blonde haired trailed behind her as she did, and the sounds of her footsteps swaying left and right. Both Iihiko and Kumagawa were so empty, their presences so small in comparison. Even after she left, that woman’s presence lingered in the room like a ghost.  In truth she lingered around at the top of the staircase listening, holding her hands in her cheeks excitedly as she did.   
  
That was right the both of them were just failure knights. They were dueling against each other now, and trying to kill one another, over princesses who had died a long time ago. The person who became Enoshima for Iihiko, Ajimu who died for Kumagawa. Even if they killed one another, the persons they wanted to see would never come back. Not only that, neither of them believed in an afterlife, or solace after death, only an ending to things. Only pitch black.  
  
An utterly pointless fight. Neither of them would gain what they wanted in their hearts by fighting one another, and yet now that they were standing on stage they felt they had no choice but to perform. The die had been cast. Or rather, the roles had been casted in the play.  
  
Like a pre-scripted performance, both thought everything had been decided before this. Kumagawa especially, had decided upon this since the moment Ajimu died in his arms. He stared at the man in the half mask with his rotted out eyes.

That man suddenly scowled. “Unpleasant. I didn’t think I’d be facing you of all people.”  
  
Kumagawa was used to people not wanting to fight him, be around him, or acknowledge his existence in general but he had to ask. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, manipulated like a puppet in someone’s palm. I wish to fight only for the princess’s sake. The thought of fighting for the sake of Enoshima Junko is extremely unpleasant.”  
  
That confirmed it for Kumagawa. Unlike everybody else, the man in front of him did not seem to either stan or kin Enoshima Junko. “Like I said, you’re wrong. “  
  
“Hmmm….”  
  
“Maybe in the end, it really is pointless to fight for someone. To save someone. After all, whether or not you save someone, someone else’s happy ending is never going to have any bearing on you whatsoever. You won’t be affected. It’s like you said I was more like her servant than her brother. I obeyed her without any resolution at all. I thought it was enough just to stay by her side, and after awhile I wanted to earn my place there. Her, her, her, it was always about her.”  
  
_What do you fight for?_  
  
“After all, in the end, Ajiu-san was only thinking about herself. She wanted to die, but she kept telling me to live until her last breath. She was really selfish. I wonder what you call people like her. But I can’t help it. I fell in love with Ajimu-san because of that. I wanted to be able to live that way one day too. Entirely for myself without depending on others.”

 _I want to be saved._  
His younger self cried out in the background. Before Kumagawa could take another step forward, a white haired boy grabbed onto his leg. He warpped his limbs around him like a snake preventing himself from moving forward. Kumagawa felt constricted, as if white snakes were covering his body. _You said you would save me. You’re going to throw me away too._  
  
That child begged and begged. In the end though he had no limbs to speak of. Snakes did not even have lacrimal glands so they could not cry. All he could do was cling to something, or scurry away through the grass. But it did not matter what he did, because snakes were the enemies of humans. Sooner or later, no matter how much he begged for sympathy someone would raise their foot and stomp on his head. If he tried to communicate with others, he would only sink his teeth into them.  
  
Snakes did not belong in a garden. They only existed to ruin gardens. They only existed to ruin the paradise of others. It was stupid of him to think he could have a garden of his own. Still, that little boy continued to beg even if it was impossible for him to cry. Snakes cannot make any facial expressions at all, they can only smile and show their teeth. What strange animals. _Ajimu-san is gone, now you’re the only one that can save me._ He begged and begged, and yet Kumagawa took a step forward ignoring him. **Shut up. This is saving you.**

He had lived his entire life moving forward. He thought as long as he continued to move forward, he would be able to live. That was why he did not stop and consider for a second, what had been done to him, how unfair it was. That he was born to be tortured into despair and then drown in a river. That nobody sympathized with him and called him a dangerous child because violence was all he knew, it was how he had been raised. That nobody cared enough about him to stick around. That he had been born with no place of belonging in the entire world. That he was somebody who would only make things worse for everybody involved, that he would only make things more complicated, therefore it made sense why others abandoned him, he was too difficult a case, too much of a risk, too much of a burden, because he had done bad things, he was a victim who could not be sympathized with.  
  
They were protecting themselves and their loved ones abandoning him. It was natural to overlook him. People had to protect themselves and their loved ones after all. It could not be helped. Therefore, he could not be helped. He was helpless from the start. His entire life, a helpless child.  
  
He already knew that, that was why he kept going forward. He rushed forward like a river. If he stopped to think about it for even a minute, the silt, the dirt, the trees, the twigs the branches that made up the river would clog it up until it became pitch black. He was moving forward for the sake of moving forward, to prove that he could move forward. As everyone else in the world had already written him off and said it was impossible for him to live. That was why he wanted to. He wanted to move past all of those things, and continue to live with that impossible trauma. Even if it meant running away from it at every second of his life.  
  
He thought as long as he moved forward, he could move past all of those things. But for human beings, there’s no such thing as living for the future is there? Every single step is a step towards the grave. Because the world is cruel. Because life is meaningless. Because humans are born for no reason, and then they die for no reason.  
  
The future he was living for, never even existed in the first place. So, desperately he clawed at his own heart bringing his hand to his chest, he screamed out looking for something, something in his life that had been more than just the trauma others had done to him. Something lasting other than the scars that were left on him. “I loved that part of her! That’s why I think now that I was only fighting for myself.”

Kumagawa screamed a guttural and incomprehensible scream truly like a beast and rushed forward. He threw his fists wildly at the ghost image of Iihiko who had already ducked out of the way and dodged to the side.

Iihiko jumped into the air, crossing his arms and digging his hands into the holsters at each of his sides. A field of metal stars appeared suddenly rushing towards Kumagawa. Kumagawa stood completely stil, a few of the stars ripped into his sweat shirt. He realized that he was still wearing the thing, and grabbed it throwing it off and over his head. Underneath he was still wearing the same customized black and white uniform as before.

“Now I can fight for real.”  
  
“Taking that sweater off was not nearly as cool as you thought it was. It's not like it was a weighted sweater and taking it off raised your power level like in dragon ball.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Kumagawa rushed forward, as if his hands themselves were blades he cut through the air with them wildly, slashing at Iihiko. The two of them were in step and no matter how wildly Kumagawa danced on his strings, Iihiko seemed to be a step ahead, stepping calmly away. It was like a beast was dancing with a gentleman, chaos and calm, somehow they were completely in rhythmn.  
  
Iihiko stepped back and grabbed the holsters at his side again. This time he drew out a pair of completely identical twin swords, throwing both of his arms as wide as possible thursting themb ehind him as he rushed forward for the maximum momentum in his swings. “  
  
Their step turned back, and this time it was Kumagawa backing up as he dodged the thin blades slicing through the air. The man in the half mask had scowled as much as his expressionless face would allow, grinding his teeth together in disgust. Then what are you invading this hospital for? If not for her?”  
  
“To die.” Iihiko jumped into the air on one of his swings and Kumagawa ducked under it. He swept wide at his legs causing Iihiko to dodge to the side, but Kumagawa followed up. He would bite, again and again. He did not care if he smashed his fangs on whatever he bit, he did not care if his teeth were broken into pieces, he would continue to bite relentlessly. He turned his whole body around and caught the blads with his bare hands as Iihiko swung them one more time. His hands bled, nad the blades cut into his palm and the gaps btween his fingers, and in the next moment they were broken to pieces,A s much as he was broken, he broke what was in front of him.  
  
Iihiko hesitated for a moment as he heard the the scream of scraping metal. The next moment Kumagawa was centimeters from his face. His head took up his entire world view, and he met the eyes of his featureless mask. “Ajimu-san told me to live, but I don’t have to obey that order anymore.”

Out of spite, he wanted to live. Out of spite he wanted to throw it all away. He wanted to ruin his one redeemable feature, that he would keep living. He wanted to make his survival until now completely meaningless. He wanted to destroy meaning. He wanted to contradict, contradict, contradict, everything he had said up until now. He wanted to destroy. He wanted to destroy the world.  
  
Ajimu had said there was something beautiful about the world, that it was cruel and yet beautiful and that was why she had kept watching it after all this time. She had gently asked him one day, to keep observing the world because she was sure as many cruel things there were in the world he would one day find something beautiful about it.  
  
That was why he wanted to destroy beauty. He wanted to rip out of his eyes. He wanted to crush them, squelch. He never wanted to see anything beautiful again. A world without Ajimu in it would never be beautiful. Beauty should not exist in the first place if it was all going to turn ugly one day. He wanted to be ugly. He wanted to be depraved. He wanted to be where all beauty went to die, if that was the case. He wanted everyone to be disgusted by him. He wanted everyone to reject him. He wanted to be despised. To be kicked, punched, stabbed, scraped, beaten until there was nothing left on his skin, no untouched places, only scars and bruises. Then nobody could say there was any trace of beauty on his body.  
  
“ I don’t think anyone but you can kill me.” He turned his entire body around and aimed a kick at Iihiko’s  head. Iihiko perfectly timed it and jumped back flipping over his head and springing with his hands off the floor in several chained back flips. No matter how much more skilled his opponent looked though, Kumagawa kept staring forward with his rotted out gray eys. “You, the one who killed Togame.”  
  
Colorless. Empty of color. All color had since rotted away. If colorful things were just going to fade away slowly, then they should just be destroyed. Because the colorful memories you had now. The memories of every single time Anshin’in-san smied at him, he could not remember those colors any more. The colors had all faded out. Those few happy memories he had had, even as memories they had been ruined. He could only feel pain from such black and white recollections.

As he landed, Iihiko straightened up. “Unhumorous. If this is really part of Enoshima Junko’s plan, than it really is comical.” He drew twin guns from his holsters and then leveled them both at Kumagawa, firing them one after another. Two revolvers in his hands. When he made six shots with one, flawlessly he would clear the barrel and throw one gun in the air and use both hands to reload it. The skills of a super high school level gunman, apparently.  
  
The moment he started to shoot, Kumagawa disappeared leaving an afterimage. Iihiko followed him perfectly turning both guns on where he appeared next. Kumagawa jumped and ran across the wall, leaving afterimages trailing behind him. No matter how flashy of a way he ran though, Iihiko simply continued to shoot. He even lead the shots to where Kumagawa would appear next.  
  
Kumagawa kicked off from the wall and jumped to the floor. His image split fives times as he ran back and forth in a distracting and pointless pattern. “Kurokami Phantom-Minus.” There was no art or skill to it at all, it was just a nonsensical copy. He was just making nonsense of the image in front of Iihiko, just nonsensical noise in visual form, a pointless distraction.

“Do you think that your movements make you harder to hit?” Iihiko led the shots perfectly, as the boy darted back and forth pointlessly before his eyes. He ran forward and back, left and right, with no pattern at all, it seemed he changed directions on a whim trying to be as unpredictable as possible. All Iihiko needed to do was continue pulling the trigger. “If you have come here to die then so be it. Die, with your regrets. What will you say as you die?”

For Iihiko there were three words he wanted to say more than anything else. There was someone he wanted to say them too, but while he was alive the first time he never got the cahnce. He had died and then lived again carrying that regret. Those words he was carrying now were so heavy he felt like he could barely move at times.  
  
He thought it was important to tell others what you needed to tell them before you died. That was why, even though he was a murderer he gave them the chance to speak as they died. He did not want them to carry those words as regrets into the afterlife like he had. Those words, if only he had the chance to say those words to her one more time.  
  
But that was impossible. Those words were like flowers. They bloomed beautifully once and then died. Those words had already died with him. He was merely a vestigial stubborness, a corpse being puppeteered around.  
  
Kumagawa jumped into the air suddenly, turning his body around like a screw and aiming a spiral kick at Iihiko. He screamed with effort one more time slamming his foot down with everything he had, all the momentum he could summon with his broken body. Iihiko crossed his guns in front of his face and deflected the blow, pushing him back.

“I-impossible. How did you dodge so many bullets?”  
  
“I didn’t dodge them.” Kumagawa stood up once more, no longer fooling around with distractions.Even his custom black uniform was thoroughly ruined. There were holes all around it, the fabric had been torn up, and sprouting from several holes was puddles of pink which grew deeper and deeper by the moment. “I resolved to take them from the start.”

“Nonsense. You make no sense at all.”  
  
He was fighting deliberately to injure himself. He saw the scratches all over his body, how many could Iihiko have claimed to even done. Kumagawa, the very act of fighting on him, seemed to just be an excuse to injure himself more. He grabbed the collar of his shirt and ran his funger down it, ripping the buttons apart one by one exposing his chest, his filthy chest covered in scars that were over fifteen years old. Iihiko understood even riddled with bullets, torn apart and covered in holes somehow in the past Kumagawa had been hurt even worse than this. “Kaiki-kun gave me an order. Protect myself. Value myself, but he died and abandoned me instead of staying with me, so I don’t have any obligation to follow that order anymore.”  
  
“Are you trying to die?”  
  
“I already told you that.”  
  
Kumagawa remarked, sounding bored.

 _Hurting everything around him, and himself. Kumagawa Misogi’s true power._ It was soething that Iihiko lacked. He was artificially made to be the strongest, he had the intelligence of both projects the flask plan and the Kamukura project shoved into his head, but he lacked experience. The raw experience that Kumagawa had, being cut apart into pieces over and over again, fighting over and over again, until his entire body was raw.  
  
“Shinobazuhou Ikasazukorosazu… No, this attack will be called. World Destroyer!”  
  
He had been holding onto this memory all this time. For her sake. For the sake of seeing her again. That was why he would not lose here, to some idiot who simply wished to die. He would kill this one, then Kurokami Medaka, then Kamukura Izuru, and then everybody else on the planet if that was what it took.  
  
He would kill them all. He would destroy the whole world. If he could shatter the mask that had become affixed permanently to her face. He wanted to see the smile behind it one last time. That was how he was able to hold on sof ar.

“Kurokami Phantom Final Minus, no… I don’t care about stories or flashy moves anymore. Non-fiction!”  
  
Kumagawa finally had two screws one in each hand as they rushed towards one another. They cut each other, and were cut by each other. They both tore at each other, with such desperation. It was like they wanted to finish the story right at this moment, by grabbing the remaining pages that were left and tearing them out of the book with their own hands.  
  
The fight went nowhere. No matter how much blood was sprayed, no matter how much flesh was scattered, neither of them gave up on their resolve.  
  
Death from shock from all the pain seemed within the realm of possibility, but Kumagawa’s mind refused to die. Because he had endured pain much worse than this. And he did not want to believe that. He was sure. He was sure he had never hurt worse than when Ajimu Najimi, a part of him, a part of his own flesh, his own blood, his own heart had been ripped away from him leaving only the gauged out flesh behind. He thought that was an unsirvable amount of pain, the worst pain he would ever endure. He did not want to believe he could live on after losing that person, that would mean she was not important to him to begin with. “Whassamatter… hmmm???? Awww man, I didn’t fall… Well then.”

“What are you a masochist?”  
  
“I shan’t deny the charge.” Kumagawa said, but even after cracking a joke like that he wasn’t able to laugh. Enduring all this pain, he wasn’t able to smile. He was just impatient, impatiently waiting for the blows to become fatal. “Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Come on, do it, let’s slice and dice each other to bits… Oh.”  
  
Then, Iihiko pulled the triggers in a way that the gunpowder inside combusted and turned into flame. He dragged the flaming barrel past Kumagawa’s face, Kumagawa regretted that it only licked the side of his face with its eat. Hell, hell was what he deserved, it was what he was aiming for.  
  
Blood splashed on the ruined hsopital around them, the ruins of the hospital broke further and further into pieces from the excess of their fight. Kumagawa notied blood on the ground and moved his foot there causing himself to slip. Iihiko noticed the opening and pressed the burning hot barrel against his body, causing a large cross shaped burn to appear on his torso, rescarring already scarred tissue, eating up half the markings on his chest.  
  
Yet, Kumagawa pressed forward even when he did not want to, because it was all he knew how to do. If he knew how to give up, to rest, to heal, he would have done that a long time ago he thought so. He grabbed a screw and thrust it right into Iihiko’s stomach, spinning it around causing the flesh to tear.  
  
His shoulders. His knees. Then finally his chest, he dug screws into IIhiko’s body in front of him. Dragging the final blow straight through his chest, spinning it, grinding it, hearing flesh scrape against metal until he had driven the screw all the way through.  
  
Blood exploded behind him, and Kumagawa only watched with dull eyes. The two guns that Iihiko held onto shattered into pieces, and his body did the same as he fell backwards. The mask that covered the top of his face at all times the one marked not-ninja, finally flew off and skipped across the ground before it landed into a pool of his own blood.  
  
He reached up towards the sky, seeing flowers blooming around him once more. The pink blood he was about to drown in, smelled pleasant, like flowers. Or perhaps he thought flowers smelled like corpses and death. He reached up still, reaching towards his light.

 

😈

 _He picked a red flower.  
__To give to her._ _  
_ _In her hair._ _  
_ _I will put the flower._

Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut flesh. Scalpel. Rip. Tear. Stitch up. Again. Repeat. Numb. Numb. Numb. My nerve endings have been torn out from my skin. Cut a line in my flesh and pull both the pieces back like curtains to see what’s underneath. Leave a y front scar on my chest like this is an autopsy. It is an autopsy. I’ve already died. I’ve died several times to this surgery already. **Anesthetized due to the pain.**  
  
Each time I die they bring me back. They send a jolt through my heart. That’s all I am anymore, electricity running through nerve endings. Electronic pulses are controlling me. A bolt of lightning hit me and I became frankenstein. Is this body mine anymore? If it’s not my body then why does it hurt me so much? **His brain had been pulled out because it had grown numb a long time ago.**

The doctor picked up a large silver hammer like instrument and cracked my ribs. One by one. He broken my ribs into little pieces and then pulled them away. He separated my rib cage and pulled it out slowly, so he could get at my heart and lungs underneath. R-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-p. I heard my own ribs creak, like they were just a creaky door. He wondered how they were going to destroy his original personality. That had been the goal of the Kamukura project as well to rip out all traces of the original ego. It turned out their way of doing it was simple and effective.  
  
They left him awake during the surgery, until he went absolutely insane and tore his own mind apart for them. **Why am I doing this again? People can’t live without a reason. That’s right, this is for the sake of that person.**

Before he knew it, his entire body was covered with dirty bandages that the others barely bothered to clean. He was soaked all the way through, and his barely stitched together wounds would get infected soon enough. His hand was grabbed and put on a table.

Why was he doing this again? People can’t live on without a reason. He was doing this for their sake. People need a reason to live. Even though in reality, they probably didn’t want a reason to begin with. They didn’t want to write anything down of their lives. He could not speak, nor could he scream. THe doctor drew out a bone saw and dragged it across his raised arm. His ingers next, one by one they were broken. They peeled back the skin from the bone.

“He needs to experience pain. Let’s begin with the teeth. It can be replaced artificially later.”  
  
They pushed his jaw open until he heard the sound of the bone cracking, and then ripped one tooth out. **They fill the blank space with thoughts and self mutilation. Consistently scrape it off with letters and sound. And people become people who only live through deception.**

Then as he a defanged and declawed dog who had once considered himself a strong protector lay on that operating table, he felt his chest rise and fall against his will. Only because a tube had been shoved down his throat to force him to breathe. Even though one of his ribs had come loose during the surgery and punctured his lung. His lung filled up with blood, but there was another tube draining the blood. He was a mess of tubes and body parts now, there was nothing left of him. THey had scooped out his brain and only the brain stem remained, and that was supposed to pass for life, even though all he could comprehend were basic body functions.

 **Hah. A layer of mask of labored breathing. Hah.**  
.  
.

.  
He had been pretending to be somebody strong for that girl’s sake.  
Not just this village, but everyone around him. They were all pretending.  
**“...Um, since when did everyone started to pretend they’re human…?”**  
**Who knows.**  
**I wish humans were real.**

In that moment of pain his mind went somewhere else. He saw the flower field once more to comfort his badly wounded ego. His hand reached up in the air.

“Man, I’d like to see that. The whole field in flull bloom. Someday the two of us could see it together, a garden of our own.”  
  
“Really, even if we’re both old and gray?”  
  
“Just you wait.”  
  
“I’ll wait forever.”  
  
She was waiting for him, that was why his consciousness had survived all this time. He just needed to survive a little bit longer. Because on that day there were words that he wanted to say to her, he was so happy that she said she would wait for him forever. Because they were not born to be children to have a place to belong in this world, yet they had found each other. He would still have a place for her.  
  
He did not want to be anyone special. He did not care about being strong, or having talent. He was perfectly fine with being villager A and villager B as long as it meant he could continue to visit that flower field with that girl. He hated flowers. He saw no point to them at all. But he loved the way that girl smiled when she looked at the flowers.

 _It’s pitch black._  
_I don’t feel pain anymore._ _  
_ _What a nice sensation darkness is._

He just wanted to smell the flowers again. Why did he have to associate flowers with death? Why every time he remembered flowers, they smelled like corpses and death, why did the beautiful reds and pinks only remind him of blood.  
  
His eyes peeled open finally, and he saw two doctors pulling equipment away from him. In the background he heard one of the masked scientists on the phone.  
  
“All of the surgeries on the prototype have been successful. Tell Hansode-chan to return to the village, with everything we’ve learned from our sloppy experimenting on the prototype we can move to the final product.”

He.  
He had volunteered to take Hansode’s place, but from the beginning they were never going to stop. They would use Hansode, and then they would use him.  
In that moment even on the brink of insanity, he realized he had been used.  
He turned his head back and laughed through his broken teeth.  
  
“Gegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegegege!”  
  
“Be quiet. We’re going to put you to sleep now, it will be painful but afterwards you’ll have forgotten all about this.”

  
“You’ve been deceiving me, haven’t you? No… No….! Everything was a lie! I was never going to save anyone from the beginning… then I wasn’t suffering to save anyone, it was all for nothing.”

 _My own face is hazy and I don’t know my name._ _  
_ _I can’t remember._ _  
_ _My memories are being destroyed._ _  
_ _But then, why is it._ _  
_ _Why do I want to see her…?_ _  
_ _If I just had that, I would be saved._

 _Why did it come to this…_ _  
_ _We just wanted to save those we love.  
_  
They ran electricity through him to force him to stop, but even with his body in shambles, he broke through one of the cuffs He ripped the other one off with his bear hand and then stood up. The next moment he had grabbed onto the head of the researcher and tore it away. Even if he had forgotten everything else, he had remembered her face.  
  
He just wanted to see that face again.  
In the hallways as he made his way through, he asked every single person he came across where she was.  
Eventually he was led to the isolation ward.  
  
The rooms were sound proof, and the walls padded. It looked like something out of a cliche insane asylum, not that he knew what those were anymore as he had forgotten everything about the outside world.  
  
In the corner there was a girl. The moment he heard her voice, singing slowly to herself he knew her.  
As he heard that voice again he remembered the second half of her poem.

 _The petals fell away,_ _  
_ _One by one,_ _  
_ _Like drops of blood._ _  
_ _The flower became white._

She was tied up, so he undid the jacket restraining her arms behind her back.

“As long as we’re alive, they’ll never repent. This village will just keep using us as tools forever There’s nothing left worth protecting..”  
  
“...”  
  
“Let’s just escape from here. No matter what I’ll protect you from now on. Forget about everything else and come with me please.”  
  
‘...Why would I do that? That’s so boring. Upupupupu.”  
  
As she said that, that girl turned her face around and he finally noticed even if he knew this was the same girl, every other detail about her had changed. Immediately she pounced on him grabbing at his face.  
  
Her own nails had been filed until they became sharpened points. Those points dug under his flesh. She started to tear at him too.  
  
However, Iihiko did not even feel hatred or betrayal in his heart. He looked around the room and saw on the walls written over and over again, Enoshima Junko. In red lipstick. As if this were out of some cliche scene in a horror movie. _It’s okay, this isn’t your fault. This is her fault._ Iihiko forgave her, as she ripped at his face.

In that moment he finally remembered the words he wanted to say.  
_“I love you, forever.”_  
  
He could only cough out nonsense though, his mouth moved on its own and plead on its own.”The f-f-f-flowers were so beautiful that d-d-d-day….”

“The hell are you talking about? Who cares about some boring ass flowers?”

  
😈

 

“So what, you’re going to run off back to Kumagawa now?”  
  
Yasuke Matsuda said standing in the hallway parallel to Enoshima Junko. This was a hell of a time for it, but those two who had irreparably burned their relationship past the point of no return were finally having a human conversation.  
  
“Are you saying I should let him die? How cruel of you Yasuke-kun, or are you saying I should choose between him and you.”  
  
“Don’t give me that shit.”  
  
“Uh. Sorry. It’s hard to turn off the villain voice.”  
  
“The what? Ugh, whatever you dumb bitch.”  
  
The two of them glared at each other while Junko brushed one of her pig tails over her shoulder, and ran her nails through it. It turned out, being genuine was not her thing. She could just run off immediately to Kumagawa, but she would be failing on the whole ‘people can change’ front if she just recklessly did whatever she wanted before and did not care about the consequences of her actions.  
  
“It’s not whatever. It’s not even like so whatever.” Gosh did she just genuinely sound like an airheaded teenager? She had always been assuming that was an act on her part. Maybe she just really talked like this and her poeticisms were the act.  
  
“Yeah, you’re right it’s not. You think I can just sit here, and let you go off and be good to Kumagawa after you destroyed me? I’m not your damn stepping stone for hope.”

The word hope made Junko shiver. Jeez, what was she Komaeda? However, she could not fault Matsuda. The one who lied at fault was her of course. It had everything to do with her. Even if he sounded like he was telling her to let Kumagawa die so he could have her all to himself, that was not the case.

Matsuda was right, she could not forget about a love she spent her entire life cultivating so easily. Especially since she had manipulated Matsuda to depend on her. Even if she had fallen in love with someone else, that did not mean she stopped loving him.  
  
However, everytime she was with Kumagawa that was an eyesore to Matsuda. Not that she was happy with someone else, but she had destroyed Matsuda and improved not for him who was by her side all this time, but for someone else.  
  
Really, that was an even worse despair than murdering him just once. Her previous definition of despair was all wrong. It was much crueler to force him to live with the results of all of his actions and all of hers combined.

“Yasuke-kun. We can’t ever go back to the way we were before. And it’s not your fault at all. It’s not because you weren’t good enough. It was mine. I love you, but the way I love you is different from the way you love me, and that’s not fair to you.”  
  
Her honest feelings, but that seemed to be hurting Yasuke worse. He grabbed his own head and stumbled backwards. “Lie, lie some more, and laugh. Laugh you damn clown. Don’t suddenly act like you’re so genuine. Don’t… don’t tell me that it’s over.”  
  
“No matter what, we can’t go back to the way things were when we were children. We can’t even go back to the way things were when you died. I can’t undo what happened, some things can’t be undone even with all fiction.”  
  
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop…”

Suddenly, her hands wrapped around his head. She hugged his head to her chest. The warmth of his cheek was too much for her, it was a warmth that she did not deserve. She looked away not wanting to see his sad face, because she did not want to enjoy it in this moment either. “You’re such a crybaby, Yasuke-kun. You should get tatooes under your eyes or something to stop you from crying, because you won’t have me anymore. I was jealous you know, I’m jealous of Ryoko-chan, and jealous of Medaka-chan. If they had been your childhood friend, I bet you would have turned out to be less of a crybaby.”  
  
“I don’t want Medaka-chan to be my childhood friend. You’re the only friend I’ve ever wanted, as long as I had you I was fine.”  
  
“I know Yasuke-kun. You still have me, hate me for the rest of your life. I’ll live on as long as I can so you can have a reason to keep going, even if it’s hating me, even if it’s the despair of hating someone you loved so much, but… I don’t deserve to be loved by you anymore. I don’t think I ever did.”

“You bitch…”  
  
“Yeah, yeah I know, I’m a bitch, you’re repeating your lines by this point Yasuke-kun. Just because your sad doesn’t mean you can let your banter get stale.” She reached up and stroked the side of his hair with her nails. Those nails were only good at raking through things though, they were only good at destroying. Trying to piece the shattered pieces back together she was only going to cut herself, but that was all she had left. She had broken through every other option. “Hey, Yasuke-kun. This might not sound true coming from me, because I always complained about how bored I am but… I had fun the whole time I was with you.”

“...Sniff.”  
  
“My childhood was fun, because of you.”  
  
“...Hrrrk.”  
  
“It was lots and lots of fun okay. That day… I should have told you that I wanted you to come outside and build a sand castle with me, I’m sorry for making you run around all day and investigate instead. I’m sorry for that, and for murdering you. Those two things I’m equally sorry about, like my bad. It was a double oopsie.”  
  
“Did you say you were jealous and apologize…? I’ve just witnessed the impossible.”  
  
“Well good luck ever getting it out of me again if we get out of this alive. Now come on, Kumagawa-kun is your friend too isn’t he? If not for my sake, let go for his.”  
  
Matsuda’s fingers slowly stopped interlocking behind her, and reluctantly he let go. As he walked away, Junko folded her hands behind her back and leaned forward watching him. “Thank you for protecting me all this time, but don’t do it anymore. Jeez, talk about clingy. In fact, next time try to defeat me.”  
  
“Of course. Don’t let anybody else kill you bitch, because I’m the one who’s going to put an end to you.”    
  
“Upupupu! How heroic of you, how handsome, how charming!” Junko cooed after him. However quickly as she turned around and moved in the other direction, the emotion faded from her face. Her expression was emptier than usual, like she was missing some vital component of herself, because she had just let him walk away.

She did not want to use Yasuke as a stepping stone. She had no intention of becoming happy without him. She would live the rest of her miserable life with him, without being forgiven by him.

He did not grasp it, but perhaps he would soon. Kumagawa and her deserved each other, in the most negative sense of the word. They were each other’s punishment for living so recklessly before that point.  
  
She wasn’t normal the way Yasuke was. She could not save him and one day he would probably let go of her and move on without her. She just had to accept that now that she would not control him. If she controlled him, he would never change, he would remain her childhood friend forever.  
  
He would remain predictable forever.  
  
Kumagawa was broken in the way she was. If she was with Yasuke, she would just keep breaking him, dragging him further and further into despair to try to get him to understand her. Yasuke deserved better than that she thought, than two broken people licking their wounds.  
  
Perhaps one day he could even become happy. Then, the idea of her childhood friend finding happiness without her would fill her heart with despair.  
  
She ran down the hallways, and interrupted the fight pretending to be the fake Junko, using a fan to cover the side of her face where her eye had been torn out. She even pulled gloves on. The gloves Ikusaba Mukuro had left her with before she ran away with Naegi. The gloves of her sister. Because her sister made her promise to protect Kumagawa while she was away, the third member of their despair inducing family.  
  
So, she made another plan, another gambit, she had thousands of them. She tricked Iihiko into believing that it was his fake Junko that ordered him to fight Kumagawa to the death. Even though Kumagawa was fighting trying to throw his life away, she knew he would not be able to. She had absolute faith in this.   
  
Her plan was to destroy Iihiko, to trick him into fighting to the death. In order to do that, she would pretend to be a fake Junko. A real pretending to be a fake. A real making mockery of a mockery. The number of fakes, doubles and replacments was getting absurd by this point.   
  
When she heard the noise of the fight stop she descended the stairs once more. Kumagawa was sitting next to a dead body. Iihiko had already breathed his last. His fingers interlaced between Iihiko’s, and he was holding his hand in one hand while in his other hand he picked up the faceplate which covered his face.  
  
There was no face at all underneath. The entire top half of his face was scar tissue. His eyes, his nose, all of the details of the upper half of his face had been ripped off. For a moment she thought Kumagawa might have done it, until she realized how old the wounds looked.  
  
“I was trying to kill myself, but I killed him. Nothing really does ever go my way. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t even mean to kill him, so I held his hand until he died.”  
  
Kumagawa said, holding the dead body still even though there was nothing to be done on it. It seemed even after death his immunity to abnormalities made it impossible for Kumagawa to undo the wounds on him.  
  
“Human lives are heavier than the world itself. I’ve destroyed the world…” Kumagawa said, his voice getting increasingly lost as he spoke. “Is this what being a murderer feels like? Ah, but I was already a murderer I killed Nagito-chan, Junko, I don’t get why you thought killing people would be fun this is a boring feeling. I’m bored. I’m bored and it’s such a pain.”

“Yeah, living, being human, it’s painful.”

Speaking to him was so natural to her at this point, that she spoke without even realizing it. Kumagawa turned his head slowly around to face her. As he stood up despite the injuries on his body, he started to move towards her picking a screw up off the floor.  
  
“That’s why, kill me please Junko. If it’s you I’m sure you can figure out a way to do it. Or, maybe if I kill you I’ll finally be motivated to off myself with my own hands. Now that I think about it, it was lazy, lazy, lazy, to make Iihiko-chan do it for me. Give it to me. Make me suffer. I deserve it, I’ve been such a bad boy. Oh well, kind of a shame though. Given the whole chance,  I would have made everybody else feel exactly as miserable as I do. Oh well, I can’t have everything, in fact I can’t have anything, but at least I can go out with style.”  
  
Before Kumagawa could take another broken step though, Junko yelled out at the top of her lungs the secret she had been hiding in her heart all this time. “MIsogi, listen to me. I’m not cool.”  
  
“...?”  
  
“I’m not stylish at all. I’m not cool. I’m super lame. I mean have you listened to me talk even once? All I do is spout anime references. I’m a bigger otaku than Yamada-kun. If I’m not talking about anime it’s some lame movie I watched. I claim to be all smart and artsy but my favorite movie is home alone.”

  
“....ehhhh?”  
  
“Even though I’m fashionable I wear the same damn thing every day. I make lame jokes and then laugh at my own jokes. Also, I’m weird, I think of weird shit like all the time. Talking to me is like talking to a thirteen year old stuck in their lolusorandom phase, but I’m so up my own ass about my own image I think it’s like high art. I’m really immature, and petty, and I care way too much about my own boobs. Mukuro’s boobs aren’t even that small she’s like a B cup. Also, I act like I’m some untouchable alpha blonde bitch but I really sound like a playground bully most of the time.”  
  
She took in one last breath. Jeez, how was she going to talk about despair for two and a half hours if she was out of breath so easily. It’s almost like being a neet had put her out of shape for something. “Even in my super cool mastermind plan, I was basically just going to be at the control panel with a sleeping bag and ramen spying on people all day long waiting for them to murder each other, so I’d just be a neet basically. There’s… there’s nothing cool about me. I was just pretending. I fooled you, I’m sorry.”  
  
“You didn’t fool me at all.”  
  
“That’s why-” She continued on ignoring him completely. Enoshima Junko did as she liked, and said as she liked, and in that moment she had decided on a whim that she was going to speak from the heart if a girl like her as unfeeling as a dead corpse even had a heart to begin with. “That’s why even if you were to die with me, it wouldn’t be cool at all! It wouldn’t be stylish! It’d be a couple of dorks dying together!”  
  
He sighed.  
She thought that would have worked. Then again, Kumagawa never really went the way she wanted him to. Of all people she always had the toughest time manipulating him.  
  
“It’s my fault Misogi, all of this. I need you to help me fix it, so please don’t die.”  
  
She was begging. How pathetic. No longer a princess in his eyes anymore. Then again she was never a princess, and he was never a knight. They were never going to aspire to such fictional roles. They were just kids pretending to be more important than they really were.  
  
“It’s not my fault? It’s your fault? Then. If it’s your fault you should be the one to fix it. Don’t drag me in with you, I just want to die.”  
  
They really were like opposites. Kumagawa had been begging her to live on with him all this time, he had done it again and again. The moment she resolved to live, it was Kumagawa who started to want to die. It was like they were always going to be revolving around each other like this, as inevitable as the moon going around the earth. If she pulled one way, he would pull back the other way. Their gravitational fields were criss crossing and over lapped.  
  
“Sorry. Forget I asked.” Junko watched him turn his back away and then immediately grabbed onto his sleeve the moment he tried to take a step away from her. “No, that’s not right.”  
  
“I should take care of my own problems. That’s how it works. You can’t save me, so leave me alone.”  
  
“No that’s not it. We were both wrong. We forced things upon each other, I forced you to clean up my mess with Mukuro and Matsuda, and you decided to do it and carry it out by making yourself the one that suffered in their place.”

   
“...”  
  
“And, and I didn’t tell you anything. I was hiding the fact that I wasn’t cool from you all along.”  
  
“Once again, that wasn’t as much of a secret as you were making it out to be.”  
  
“Neither of us said anything. We made conversation to keep up apeprances. We need to say things or… or…”

Kumagawa’s rotten eyes looked down at the floor. They looked like the eyeballs were about to roll out of his skull and only the blackened holes would remain. “But there are things you can’t understand even if you’re told, aren’t there? Even if you’d told me, I probably wouldn’t have accepted it. Words can’t be trusted you know… the moment you speak your wishes it becomes dramatized.”  
  
He was distrusting by nature. Even when people told him they cared about him he never believed it. He chose to be miserable again and again because it was all he knew. He was eternally playing the victim. Even after becoming aware of this, even after admitting it all and screaming his self loathing loud enough to shatter the sky above him and cause the broken pieces of the heaven’s to rain down in the virtual world he had not done a single thing about it to change it.  
  
The reason he helped Mtasuda and Junko even when he was trying to recover for himself was his own selfishness, he did not want to focus on himself. He was scared of recovering. He was scared who he would be, if he did not tell lies, if he did not deceive others and himself at all times. As much as he was afraid of losing his real self, he was equally afraid of being human, because behind human was a painful thing. Even though he bragged all the time about how he could endure any pain, he was afraid of pain, what a terrible hypocrite he was. So prideful, completely unearned pride, prideful about nothing at all. He just wanted to be a special person like the talented people in the end, he was angry because he was not as special as they were so he pretended and acted like he was some kind of special person, like he had some kind of worth and he passed off his fraudulent pride as the real thing.  
  
“But if we’d talked about it. If I had talked to you more genuinely before this point we would have…”  
  
“It was always going to end up like this. Saying you understand others is just an ego trip of conceit on the person who was told. So what I want isn’t words.”  
  
“But if you don’t say anything you won’t understand either way.”  
  
“That’s right. Thinking you can understand each other without being told anything is an illusion. It’s impossible either way. I thought you and I were like two halves but… that’s just a lonely delusion.”  
  
Kumagawa looked so lost as he said that. His despair really was so boring. Just the despair of someone who had resigned to suffering quietly all on his own. If he was a little louder it would be fun at least.

   
“I’ve already accepted it. I was born to suffer all my life and then die without any hope, so just let me die already. My whole life’s a joke, but it’s taking way too long  
  
“But!”

  
Junko raised her voice one more time.  
  
“But… I… I... “

 _What I want isn’t hope filled words._ _  
__If you're looking for it you don't have it.  
_ _It wasn’t mutual understanding, or to be friends, or to be together._ _  
_ _It wasn’t anything like that.  
__Yet I wanted.  
__All I could do was want.  
__I wanted wanted wanted everything._   _  
_ _Saying I want everything is extremely self righteous.  
__Saying that I already understand everything when I have nothing is moreso.  
_ _Its a dictatorial and conceited wish._ _  
_ _It’s shameless and repulsive._ _  
_ _And I’m absolutely disgusted at myself for wanting that._ _  
_ _But if we._ _  
_ _If a relationship exists where we can force._ _  
_ _That ugly mutual understanding on each other and accept it.  
__If we can find in each other which each of us want.  
Because we're without it, those crucial things. We're lacking.   
_ _I realize that’s completely out of reach._ _  
_ _He’s never going to see things my way. He’s too stupid. His brain works differently than mine._ _  
_ _His eyes aren’t as sharp._ _  
_

“But still I… I’ve always wanted… I want… the real thing! I want to enjoy my life too! I’ve always wanted, someone to enjoy the despairs of life with, and laugh at them with me!”

Admitting she wanted something so stupid.  
What a farce.  
The lonely girl brainwashed people to try to force her way of thinking on them, she turned the world into her own little playground thinking it would be more hospitable to people like her.  
  
“Hey, come on laugh at me already MIsogi. I’m just a stupid and empty girl. So, laugh like you usually do, and go back to speaking the way you usually do.”  
  
He had been trying so hard to resist her. Just like the time in the virtual world, because he agreed to return to the real world again he only suffered. Even if he got a little bit better, he only fell further. Before that he still had AJimu-san and Kaiki-kun but now both of them were gone.   
  
For him living only meant more losing. Not all at once but piece by piece, it all fell through his fingers slowly. It was like living with constant chinks being driven into his armor. The more he resisted, the weaker he got. He never came out stronger, he never overcame he only succumbed. He got lesser, and lesser and lesser.   
  
No, mostly he was afraid that he had been using others as an excuse to keep on living until this point. He had defined himself through Ajimu Najimi, as she was the one who met him first, he acted like her, when he lost her he lost sight of himself. He was afraid, he was deathly afraid when he lost her again this time that he would lose sight of himself again.  
  
So he decided to kill himself. Rather than fading away slowly, watching pieces of himself disappear like sand in a sieve no matter how desperately he tried to hold it all together. Even now he was trying to do that. His body rocked forwar with pain. He touched his face, feeling the cracks and the broken pieces that were desperately trying to hold themselves together of that mask of his. Soon it would shatter and the big reveal he had nothing underneath him. There was no mystery, no deception, no true self lying in wait nothing there.  
  
Before that happened, he wanted to smash himself into pieces against the rocks. He wanted to drown in the river like Dazai. He thought he should have been able to. Why could he not? Even though he tried, he ended up killing his opponent. That made fear set into him.  
  
Perhaps he never really cared for Ajimu that much in the first place.  
If he loved her so much, why could he not die for her?  
She must be lonely right now, his heart still ached at the thought.  
She was just an excuse to him.  
All of those people he loved so much, were they just excuses?   
  
However, Junko appeared before him.   
Just when it felt like he was forgetting himself, she helped him remember. She grabbed each of the hands covering his face and slowly peeled them away.   
He was just hiding his crying fac.  
He was shy.  
His eyes had returned to blue, as if the tears were water pouring out. As if water had returned to him. Rain giving him life.  
Kumagawa Misogi was finally able to cry for himself. He cried. He mourned his loss.  
And he did not stop.  
Time did not stop.  
He was able to keep breathing even acknowledging his own sadness.   
  
"You can't die, because you hate losing right, senpai? Losing your life, would definitely be losing." 

『Jeez, so selfish as always. Fine, I'll let you deceive me again. Lie and tell me there's a reason to live.』  
  
Even as miserable as he was, Kumagawa smiled at her. He walked forward and wiped the tears from her eyes, she did not even realize she had been crying again. His thumbs brushed against her delicate eyelashes, and for some reason in that moment that touch felt more intimate than any kiss.  
  
She wondered if she had ever kissed him properly before this point, or was she just kissing his mask before. Well one day, she would see his real face, and she would hold onto it then with both hands on her cheeks, and then she would, upupu a lady never tells. 

“Mmm, Misogi can I make a selfish request?”

『You’re going to do it anyway, but fine go ahead.』  
  
“Now that you’re no longer being deceived into thinking I’m cool.”

『I never fell for that.』  
  
“Could I… fall for you?”

 『Mm. Sure. Even if everything was a lie up until this point, just show me another face, and I’ll fall for you all over again.』  
  
“You shouldn’t fall so much.”

『I can’t help it I’m clumsy you know.』  
  
“Clumsiness isn’t moe these days.”  
  
Talking about stupid things like that, they continued to live in an uncool way. Junko even fist pumped the air, because this time the person to stop Kumagawa, had not been Medaka or anyone else. This time she had finally been able to move by herself.  
  
Kumagawa walked to the corpse and picked it up.  
  
“Ewe, corpses are icky, senpai.”

『Well, I’m always stuck with the icky jobs and… You know, he’ll be lonely like this. We should bring him back to the person he cares about.』  
  
“Misogi, I have a plan but to do it… you’re going to have to do something you hate again. I’m going to go and beat her, but in order to do so we have to lose first and fall into her trap.”  
  
『...』  
  
“I know you hate losing but, MIsogi, losing is fun sometimes right? If we fall down that far, if we knocked flat on our asses, then we can have the fun of climbing all the way back up.”  
  
Before she left the room Enoshima Junko scoured it for any trace of Gaen Izuko. All she found was a printed out selfie of Izuko's with a message written on the back.   
_If you lived then, I guess I lost.  
__Even if you know everything that doesn't mean everything goes your way.  
__Let's play again, JunJun._

Then, Gaen signed her name with a large heart drawn around it.   
The smiling face in that headshot pissed Junko off so much that she tore the photograph in half immediately. 

😈

 

“What kind of lively conversation did you have with Mukuro?” Makoto asked, sitting on a pile of desks.  
  
On the opposite side of the room, his opposite reflection Shuichi sat politely on a single desk, folding his hands in his lap. “I didn’t even get to finish. It’s a shame. My job ended up being half-done. That was a though one, nothing less from a wolf. It’s beyond what I can handle. How in the world was Kagenui going to kill such a wonderful person?”

“You… your role is… to unmask people and disclose their true identities, right?” Makoto felt like he was starting to understand. He did not even hold a grudge against Shuichi for mocking him and taunting him with the truth so many ties, if he could understand the people around him a little bit more.  
  
No, the person all along that he did not want to understand was himself. He did not want to see the reflection of himself. He was gazing at all these wonderful people and did not want to think about how ordinary he was in comparison.  
  
“That’s what I’m saying, it doesn’t matter even if you unmask her. Because she has a little brother who refuses to stop loving her, no matter what her identity is. Mm... that may be why Kagenui-san gave up. But I’d surmise that I can’t do quite the same thing. Isn’t that so? Naegi-senpai, you’ll disclose my true identity, and I’ll be unmasked as the culprit and then the mystery will end.”  
  
As he said that, he gave one final tug on his hat. Makoto had been tormented by Shuichi for so long, like he was being haunted by a creepy shadow, but he could not help but notice how scared Shuichi looked when he did that.  
  
“Let’s finish it like this. I won’t fight you or anything, we can do it with words. That’s your strong suit after all, Naegi-senpai. A one-on-one duel. That is quite exciting. You missed out on this, if things had gone the correct way you’d be fighting this duel of words with Enoshima Junko as your final enemy.”  
  
“The correct way. I don’t think, there’s a correct way for things to have gone, Shuichi-kun. If things had gone what you say was the correct way, someone irreplaceable like Mukuro would have been lost.”  
  
“You might regret saying that later. Let’s say because Mukuro was saved in this version of events, somebody else close to you dies instead, would you be able to accept that so easily?”  
  
“I… I don’t know. I’ve been relying on other people and putting them in danger. This time, it’s something I have to do myself. I… I’m scared… to be alone but I have to.”  
  
“Something you have to do alone? Naegi-senpai, you may think you are working yourself to the bone, for the sake of Mukuro-chan and Kirigiri-senpai but isn’t that just habit? How foolish. One tends to find excessive value in something that was almost lost. Perhaps you’re just working yourself to the bone like Kumagawa, because you’re afraid of losing.”

Shuichi finally glared forward with both eyes. It was the first time Makoto thought Shuichi genuinely looked him in the eye.  
  
“I genuinely think that, if you had all the nice things in your life stripped away, you’d be no better than Kumagawa. It’s just you were spoiled by happiness until this point. I refuse to believe…”  
  
He gritted his teeth.  
  
“A person like you shouldn’t exist in this world. Your character is too shallow. No matter how many times I try to break you though, you refuse to give up on those ideals of yours. Oh, let me just make it clear that I’m not pleading for my life.”  
  
“Pleading for your life?”  
  
“I’ve been telling you, haven’t I? This is a battle and I’ve lost. You and I couldn't come to an understanding. Was I not charming enough? Well that is the correct answer, Naegi-senpai. That is the right thing. The hero should smash the villain, this always ends with hope defeating despair.”  
  
Shuichi took the gun and threw it across the floor. It landed on Makoto’s feet. He knew this was just a childish stunt and it would fail, but he could not help but make his final taunts. He had already accepted he would die, but he wanted to get the last laughs out at least.  
  
“If you kill me right now, Kirigiri-senpai will be spared. If you spare me, your precious Kiri might die because of your decision to spare me. Will you be able to handle that? Choose.”

“I see. I’m not a detective, but this time I’ll have the honor of doing so. Shuichi-kun, your true identity is…”  
  
Makoto stood up from his desk. As he did so, Shuichi’s eyes widened in excitement. “Yes, shoot me with your truth bullet please. It’s not fair, it’s not fair people like you exist in this world who can continue living on without dirtying their hands with blood. Become like Munakata-sensei, destroy despair for the sake of your hope.”

Makoto kicked the gun back to Shuichi’s side of the room. It spun across the floor and landed in front of his feet. Despite being incredibly cool it was a dangerous thing to do, which is why it’s a good thing this is a fictional story. Don’t try this at home kids.

“You’re my cute kouhai, and Kiri’s surrogate younger brother. That’s who you really are. I won’t shoot you, even if you betray us.”

“You freak, you freak, you freak! You selfless freak! Kirigiri-senpai may die if you let me live, get that through that empty skull of yours! I’ve been critiizing you all this time, why won’t you learn? You have to know it too! Somewhere in your heart, you must know that you’re cheating. You want to face the consequences of helping a murderer like Mukuro-chan out of sympathy. You can’t respond to Kirigiri-senpai’s feelings for you, and you can’t do anything to fix her situation with her father. You know you’re unworthy to be by her side, to have the emotional importance she places on you. You dated Mukuro-chan, because she was obsessed with you over showing a tiny sliver of kindness, isn’t that just taking advantage of her? Won’t that always be a fundamentally unbalanced relationship, becauseshe’s so starved for love anything you do for her will be amazing. You respect your senpai Kumagawa, but you feel inferior to him because you can’t live the same way he does, always directly challenging things and being active, you’re too passive. Are you allowed? Is someone like you allowed to be happy, just because you’re a little more fortunate in life than them, you’re privileged enough to grow up in a normal household, that they all desired more than anything else but you resent your normality. Aren’t I…? The worst kind of human being imaginable?”

Makoto took in all that criticism at once. This time he did not let it overhwhelm him. At the same time, it felt like the window had burst open, and suddenly kanji characters were flooding into the room. Words, words, words, words, so many words and he did not know how to respond to any of them. He did not know what to do. He desired an ending where everyone would live, but he was not smart nor capable enough to make that happen on his own. He did not think he was especially kind either. Kindness was reaching past your own pain to look at others, and Kumagawa who was in far worse pain than him always went farther for people than he did. He felt like he was too passive and did not go far enough for the people who were willing to fight and die for him. He did not know what earned them their loyalty in the first place.  
  
He felt like until this point, even if he was an open person willing to listen to others, he just waited for people to come to him and listened to them then. He was willing to help others, but he had to be pushed into it. He was too passive, far too passive by nature, and he understood why all of his platitudes seemed empty.  
  
He had the beliefs of a hero, but he did not want to see himself as a hero. Perhaps because he knew in his heart that he would never be capable enough of living up to those beliefs.  
  
It felt wrong. Perhaps it was unfair on a basic level, that when he told people to never give up hope he was treated like a hero, but when Komaeda told people to never give up hope, they ostracized him as a delusional crazy person.  
  
“Ever since Kumagawa-senpai said those words to you in the final trial of the killing game, you’ve been doubting yourself haven’t you? Just give in already. A person like you can’t exist,a  character like you is too shallow.”  
  
“The person you hate isn’t me, is it? The person you hate is just yourself, Shuichi-kun.”  
  
“Shut up with the platitudes already! You’re only able to say such empty platitudes because you haven’t seen hell.”

“Even if… Even going through hell, Kumagawa-senpai is a kind person. Nagito-chan is a kind person. They say the same platitudes as I do. Even if I were to lose everything, I’d still want to be kind. I can still try to be kind, in the face of a cruel world-”  
  
“Ah, I see. The perfect answer from a saint. But talk like that doesn’t reach us mere mortals. We’re actively hurting people. Why are you trying to go break your back saving the life of someone like me, especially when I threatened your dear Kiri. That’s reckless, too reckless. The world would be better off with all of us dead. That includes me. And if you’re going to say that every life is equally precious, and no person is truly bad to the core, or some cliche like that, those are just empty platitudes from someone who hasn’t faced reality.”  
  
Shuichi's tantrum stopped suddenly like he had just gotten bored of it. He was bored of his desperation to win, and tired. He reached towards the floor and grabbed the gun, swiping it up he placed it to the side of his head. He spun re muzzle before doing so, but knew the bullet would land on him. He was not lucky like Makoto. “Well, guess I lost is it because of the severity of the lies I told, or the acts I commited…? I have to say, I must have been rather insane, thinking anybody would buy my act of pretending to be a person.”  
  
“Hey, you…If you planned on shooting yourself, why did you come here and talk to me?”  
  
“There are times where you have to fight, even if you know you’re going to lose. Kumagawa-senpai and I should have become friends. If I have to say any dying words… stop spouting platitudes, and grow up. Let go of your adolescence already.”  
  
Trouble, harm, misfortune, things are not cut and dry.  
He already knew that, he had accepted that.  
Kumagwa called him a hero, and himself a villain but roles like heroes and villains never existed in the first place.  
What is right, what is wrong, it depended on the person.  
He wanted to save everybody but.  
Everybody, was so many people.  
They would all disagree, it would be hard for them to understand each other.  
Makoto could not help but think, that Shuichi was not actually threatening Kirigiri.  
Or even trying to force a cruel choice between Makoto dirtying his hands to save Kirigir, or putting Kirigiri at risk.  
As villainously as Shuichi presented himself.  
Makoto could not help but think that Shuichi thought his dying was the only way to save Kirigir.  
If that was the case, if he was holding a gun to his head, shaking, building up the resolve to pull the trigger on himself.  
In that case, he did not believe there was a happy ending where he got to continue living with Kirgiri, fussing at her side and helping her solve mysteries as a sidekick like he wanted to.  
  
“Don’t you think ideals are just lies in the end, Naegi-senpai? Well, if you’re sick of me I can understand, there’s nobody more sick of myself than I am.”

If that was the case.  
That was too damn sad.  
  
“You might not believe this, but because of that naivete of yours I was able to have my fun with you. I’m glad I could disappear, before your adolescence ended. Goodbye, Naegi-senpai.”

 _Goodbye, my adolescence.  
  
_He wanted to let go and just think that.  
Because he was afraid, of the decision he would make, if it might doom Kirigiri later in the future.  
He was okay with dying for the sake of somebody else because of his own recklessness, but he could not bear the thought of someone being hurt.  
As always he was bleeding.  
He bled with empathy, feeling the pain of others rather than his own.   
He tried to stand it until he could not anymore. 

“Screw that! Who said my adolescence was over! You’re right, ideals, platitudes, they’re nothing but lies, but shut up they’re my empty platitudes! I’m not going to give them up so easily.”  
  
As Makoto said that, recklessly, recklessly, recklessly as ever he rushed forward and tackled Shuichi down.  
  
“You’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong. You can’t exist. You can’t save someone who did nothing but criticize you and make you suffer. You can’t save me.”  
  
“I didn’t save… someone else… right now I just saved myself. Kumagawa did. Kirigiri did. Togami did. Mukuro did.Zenkichi did.  Everyone saved me. So, I should stay true to the self they saved. I don’t think I’m special but they do… who am I to… tell them they’re wrong.”  
  
The two of them wrestled over the gun but they were of equivalent body strength so both of them were knocked out.  
  
Don’t play with a loaded gun kids.  
Don’t mistake fiction for reality.  
  
Shuichi was denied his dramatic death scene. Makoto was denied his scene of dramatic turnaround towards hope at the end. But for now, they all lived. As the fake Enoshima Junko finally caught up to them, and saw Mukuro unconscious and bleeding outside, and the two boys unconscious on top of each other.

😈

And now, the curtain is drawn.  
The final scene.  
The villainess will reveal her plan.  
  
The moment Matsuda returned to the room he had met his father, he collapsed to the floor. In the chair where he had argued with his father a moment ago, there was nothing more than a corpse.  
  
Matsuda clutched the side of his head. “Damnit, I just hallucinated the entire thing. My worst enemy wasn’t my father, or Junko or even Kumagawa, it was my own mind sabotaging myself the entire time.”  
  
“Yeah, god Matsuda-kun you are so late on that revelation that I don’t even want to give this moment it’s proper gravitas. I mean come on everybody kept telling you you were talking to yourself. Besides you knew I was running around as a fake Junko all along, I helped you make that silly set up to hang Junko on all those strings and you didn’t tell anybody. Maybe cut the pity parade now, we’re on a shed-dyule.”

Nisenoshima Junko sat on a railing, kicking her legs. As she did so, imagine the camera panning out dramatically to reveal that Matsuda was sitting in the middle of the scene, Medaka and Zenkichi were being restrained, Kamukura was tied up in red string, Komaeda was sleeping like a scarificial lamb on the altar unknowing what would happen to him next, and Junko and Kumagawa just walked in. The stage was set, the actors finally assembled.  
  
That girl muttered to herself.“ _The petals fell away, One by one, Like drops of blood.The flower became white_ .” As she did so, she was playing with paper between her two hands to pass the time. Her hands moved quickly folding the paper into an oragami flower. She let them drop at her feet, and then moved to the next sheet of paper.  
  
“God, you guys took forever. I got so bored I had to learn how to do origami as a hobby, and then become amazing at it. It took like fifteen whole minutes, and now, done.” She put one more oragami fower in her hair and then looked at the assembled people in front of her. “Alright time to reveal my doomsday plan.”  
  
“It’s not even your doomsday plan, you stole it from me you Junko poser!” Junko snapped at her.  
  
“Look, you’re just going to have to get used to the fact that there are two Junkos. I really appreciated your performance, you defined the role, but it’s time to step down. There are two Junkos, one Junko, and one cooler Junko.”

She clapped both her hands together laughing at her own joke.  
  
“Alright, it’s a simple question. I’m not going to take two hours to explain it. How does a villain win? That’s simple, they shoot the hero.” The fake Junko grabbed the head of the corpse and then ripped it off of the body. The body’s tongue rolled out as she did so. “Matsuda Fukurou had one last trump card in the case of his death. For two years I’ve been preserving the body keeping it so it didn’t realize it was dead, but now his final style, the testament user has activated. The professor made it so if he died again before accomplishing his objective, he would take down all of humanity with him. It was probably for some scumbag reason like he didn’t need a world that didn’t work the way he wanted it to. In the end it meant that he took the earth as a hostage. So, hero, go save the world, go destroy the moon, and then go choke in space and die. Leave all your friends behind and die for the sake of humanity.”

Medaka Kurokami raised her head.  
  
“You were born for the sake of others after all. You can finally fulfill that wish of yours of saving everybody on the planet at once. Then once your out of the way I can have my fun.”

Junko and Kumagawa had nothing to do with this. This entire time, the plot had been centered around removing Medaka and every other hero out of the way to stop her own progress from destroying hope’s peak.  
  
Medaka stood up and then cracked her back forcing her spine back into place. “Is that what you wanted? You should have just told me, instead of getting my friend Shiranui involved and forcing her to play bait to make me come here. Fine, this is goodbye everyone. I’ll be going to destroy the moon now. I don’t think I’ll be able to return, so give my regards to everyone at the academy.”

Zenkichi broke free of the boy restraining him and threw a fuss. “D...don’t screw with me like that! You were finally starting to live for yourself, Medaka-chan. Besides how are we supposed to defeat that villain over there if you’re gone ANd I can’t let you die alone-”  
  
“This wasn’t part of the deal!” Shiranui Hansode said as she glared at the fake Junko. “You said you were going to put her in a death game, not kill her outright.”

Before anybody else could move though, suddenly screws appeared from nowhere and plunged into all of their backs. The only ones that Kumagawa spared were himself, Junko, Matsuda and Medaka.

『..This is enough, right? Medaka-chan.』

“Ah… Kumagawa. It’s not your fault.” Medaka looked at the crooked standing boy, riddled with holes and barely able to stand on his own two feet. She felt like she had pushed something terrible on him once again for a boy who already carried to much despite his fragility. “I’m sorry I just keep saying nice words, and always push the dirty work onto you. I’m the one who surrendered this time, not you, okay? I gave up.”

『No problem… I’m used to being hated. And besides even if you’re giving farewells in the end you’ll definitely just survive again, Medaka-chan.』

“Ehhhhh, what she’s definitely going to die this time. What is she going to do punch the moon? This is obviously just a fakeout. She’s going to be executed by rocket ship the same way I was planning on killing Kirigiri-san.” Junko said next to him.

『It’s transparently obvious, but if you want to bet on this then go ahead Junko. Medaka-chan will come back to Hope’s Peak like it’s natural. And at the graduation ceremony she’ll ask the beloved me to give me the second button on my uniform.』  
  
“Kukukuku, your second button, huh? I would want that. I really want that. Now I don’t have any other choice but to live and come back.”  
  
“Go die! THe second button is mine. Besdies we haven’t even figured out the terms of the bet.” Junko said, deciding to play games at the literal worst time as usual.  
  
Kumagawa put a hand in his pocket casually and held out his other hand. 『Hmm, if I win Junko marries me, and if Junko wins and you die.』  
  
“Then I get to kill you!”

『Are you regressing on your character development already?』  
  
“What, you’re going to pop back up alive afterwards? Come on, just once for the feels.”

『That’s an improper use of the word feels.』Kumagawa sighed, and looked to Medaka ocne more.  
  
“Kumagawa, it’s hard to say that I ever got along well with you but although I don’t want to admit it. I’m happy that I met you. The times I fought with you were the happiest for me. I was really jealous, that Junko stole you away and all you do is squabble with her these days. If I had a brother… it would probably feel like this.”

『Wait… if? You already have a brother, don’t you? Poor Maguro-chan he didn’t get any screentime at all this fic and now his own sister’s forgotten him.』  
  
“Aaaaaaah… I laughed so much that I ended up crying. Well then. May you be happy forever! Misogi!” Wiping the tears from the corner of her eyes, face so flushfed full of life she looked like she might never die, she gave him one last smile.

『Bye, bye, Human.』

The moment Medaka had left them, to go to the rocket ship outside prepared for her by the false Junko that was definitely not going to explode the moment she got into space, and preform the first execution to introduce her new killing game, the fake Enoshima Junko laughed.  
  
“Uuuuupupupupupupu. Is that your great plan? You’re going to surrender to me and hope to win next time! You really are a disappointment of a Junko! THe original is so disappointing! Why are they so valued over fakes again.”

She noticed Kumagawa was dragging a corpse behind him. Kumagawa stopped smiling for the sake of Medaka, and looked up at the other girl again. 『Iihiko-chan’s dying words, steel your heart and listen.』  
  
“I’m listening, what are they?”

『Princess, please forgive me for dying for your sake.』  
  
“An annoying man right ot the end. Was he trying to impress me with a line like that?”

『I won’t kill you. I already destroyed too much by killing Iihiko-chan, and I promised him when I listened to his dying words.』

“Ehhh? Killing me what are you talking about? Like I'd give you the chance -oh, I mean you'd fail for sure but you're not gonna try? You don't wanna kill me? Now I feel less special. You’re boring too then, just like him.”

『Don’t say that. Iihiko-chan may have killed someone important to me, but he did it because he was protecting you. Don't say his death was pointless. If you say that it'll be like he died all alone, he'll be lonely.』

Junko finally crossed her arms, looking at her mirror image. “Let’s settle this on a different stage. That’s what all of this is about isn’t it? You want to throw another killing game. Everything you’ve done so far has been foreshadowing and set up. So, throw me in, and you enter the same one, and I’ll find out who you really are and defeat you on national tv. The ratings will be a splash! Just think about it.”  
  
“Hmm, hmm, but I’ve already got my roster picked out and you aren’t in it. There’s no reason at all to include you, in fact if I kill you right here everything will go to plan.”  
  
She snapped her fingers, and the roof of the hospital was torn up. Five giant robots appeared. She had never needed Iihiko to begin with, he was just a flashy distraction to lure them into thinking they could solve all this if they defeated one particularly strong enemy.

She was not like Junko either, she did not deliberately leave loose ends hoping that she would hang herself on them. Junko realized she had made a slight miscalculation, assuming the other would love despair the exact same way she would.

Matsuda suddenly threw his head on the ground. “Please. Let me betray my friends for you. I’ll erase their memories, so they can fight against you in the killing game as clueless idiots. Then, at the end of it they’ll find out they were put in this game because they were betrayed by someone like me.”  
  
“Matsuda-kun…You’re not allowed to-” Before Junko could say anything more, suddenly Kumagawa appeared behind her driving a screw into her back to quiet her down. They had already decided to give up, to surrender so they could live and climb their way back up, Junko could not throw it away because she was afraid to lose Matsuda.

『Yasuke-chan. You really do always protect us.』  
  
“Shut up. I want to hate you.” Yasuke said as he glared at Kumagawa. “I want to hate you two so much. I despise you.It’s because of you two I can’t change. I’m going to be a part of ending the world again, I’m going to have my hand in setting up another killing game, I’ll have to live with all that guilt because of you two. I want to hate you but…”

Matsuda looked Kumagawa in the eye.

“I love you two so damn much. Do you love me?”  
  
His intensity as a human being was plummeting.  
It completely dashed itself against the payment.  
His skull had broken open and cracked like an egg and his brains were spilled out on the concrete sunny side up.

The Fake Junko merely laughed in the background. “You really never learn, Matsuda-kun. That’s why you’re such a zero. You’re basically patient zero for despair. All that time if you had just let go of those two, you wouldn’t have to dirty your hands again.”  
  
“If I let go of those two, if I let go of my flaws, this wouldn’t be a very good story.”  
  
Fake Junko sneered. “There’s no such thing as good stories to begin with. They’re all just meaningless distractions. And for those of us who can’t distract ourselves, all we can do is suffer.”  
  
Surrdender complete.  
Kumagawa collected the unconscious Junko and Zenkichi over each of his shoulders, and looked back to Matsuda.

『Bye, bye, Yasuke-chan. May you find true love, and forget about Junko and me.』  
  
“Don’t talk like that. I still haven’t shown you my smile yet. MIsogi.”

『Ah yeah, you’re right. I’m looking forward to seeing it the next time we meet. When you come to kidnap us to put is in the killing game, FakeJunko-chan please be gentle, I’m just a sad little boy after all.』

Kumagawa said as he began to walk away with those two over his shoulders, stumbling, barely able to keep walking on with such a tremendous loss mounting on his shoudlers, but somehow finding the strength to keep walking.

  
  
**😈The Epilogue or perhaps the punch line** 😈  
  
  
Why would there be an epilogue?  
There’s no punch line waiting, either. What lines are left to cross?

The author retires to her room once more. Now there’s no longer a grumpy boy in a mask to wait on her hand and foot, so things are a little bit harder. Hoewver, she has a new toy to play with.  
  
There’s a very hunky boy all tied up in red strings by her bed. She thinks it’s the red string of fate. Pu hu hu.  
  
“We haven’t lost.”  
  
He says in an emotionless voice.  
  
“I just wanted Nagito to be able to make video games, without worrying about the rest of the world. That’s why I decided to solve everything on my own, but I was wrong. Nagito’s important in these things too. I ended up pushing everything on him now, but… if I bet on him as a wild card I think he’ll win. He’s really smart at this, solving mysteries, figuring out the schemes of others, I bet he’ll topple your plans.”  
  
“God you’re just suppoed to shut up sit there and look pretty, until I decide to frame the end of Hope’s Peak on you.”The Fake Junko groaned in a disatisfied voice. “And really? You’re betting everything on Komaeda, that’s how I know you’re desperate and you’ve lost.”

The Fake Enoshima Junko has won.  
The real Enoshima Junko has surrendered to her. The death game will start again. Over.  
The story could have ended with that one line.  
  
You probably already guessed, but my dear Matsuda-kun stopped narrating a chapter ago. I’ve even taken over the narrative prematurely, that’s how much I’ve hijacked the sequence of events.  
  
To be honest I can’t look through people’s memories like Matsuda-kun, so I have no idea what happened after that. I suppose I can imagine what they were thinking, as a proper storyteller might.

My personal prediction is that nothing particularly changed - Junko, Mukuro, Kumagawa, Makoto, they all failed to grow up that was the plan I set up making them face all those adults like that - in fact maybe things only got worse.  
  
Oh I can tell you what happened to Shuichi.  
The moment we recovered him, he was dragged away and started screaming begging me not to erase his memories. He told he did not want to forget what he’s done. It seems he’s trying to take responsibility.  
  
Puhuhu.  
I wiped his memories extra hard.  
Now he doesn’t remember anything that happened at Hope’s Peak at all.  
He’ll go into the game a blank slate, one of those completely empty protagonists that you can self insert yourself into. Aren’t I a conisderate storyteller?  
Try your hardest, I’m rooting for you from the bottom of my heart, Shuichi-kun. This time around now that you have a second chance try to become less of a failure of a human being. You’ve forgotten you’re a terrible person so you can be better.  
  
Suffice to say, Kumagawa and Junko can’t return to their normal lives at hope’s peak.  
That said it’d hardly be cute of me to chop off the story here and end it like some hack who thinks a half told story with no resultion is mysterious and daring. Only idiots like Kumagawa think vaguery and nonsense is somehow deep. So instead of an epilogue why don’t I conclude with a preview?  
  
One day in march, half a year later - come to think of it, I don’t know what day Hope’s Peak graduation ceremony is. I guess I forgot to do my reserach, maybe it’s a little spotty.  
  
All they wanted to do was return to that school. All Kumagawa wanted to do was graudate. Then suddenly, he’ll lose consciousness right as he’s standing on the steps. He’ll collapse and wake up to realize there’s a void in his memory.  
  
The last thing he remembers is that the world was going to be destroyed by a falling moon, that his precious Medaka-chan died pointlessly, so therefore he's lost both Medaka-chan and Ajimu-san. He does not remember if he ever made it back to his beloved school or not. It’s tragically ambiguous like that.  
  
Kumagawa MIsogi. Enoshima Junko. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.

Imagine Junko is cuddled up next to Kumagawa if you would. Imagine them getting all snuggly, and then suddenly they spill out of a locker.  
The full cast.  
The main trio.  
Oh, I guess Matsuda is not there because he’s here with me. Then I just swapped Zenkichi in but they’re foils so it doesn’t matter anyway.  
They’re there to meet the final boss.  
That is me, hidden in the killing game.  
They have to find me and expose me before everyone dies.   
  
Then it’s time for the romantic comedy to begin.  
The showdown, in more ways that one.  
Coming soon, to a hijacked cable station near you.  
THe final killing game. The fifty third killing game.  
Don’t you worry about the rest of the details of how I got there, it’s ging to happen, because I planned it that way. That’s all you need to know.  
My Medaka Box and Dangan Ronpa crossover fanfiction, look forward to it, and leave a comment please because the author put in a lot of hard work into writing this script. 

  
**And the world stopped spinning.  
** **A world was destroyed.**  
**See you at V3**


End file.
